path: root/2559-0.txt

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Forsyte Saga, The Man Of Property, by John Galsworthy

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world 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.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

Title: The Forsyte Saga, The Man Of Property

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: March, 2001 [EBook #2559]
[Most recently updated: May 11, 2020]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORSYTE SAGA, THE MAN OF PROPERTY ***




Produced by David Widger

      spines (203K)

      subscription (12K)

      editon (10K)

      titlepage1 (38K)

      frontis1 (60K)




      FORSYTE SAGA

      THE MAN OF PROPERTY

      By John Galsworthy


      Contents

         PREFACE:

         THE MAN OF PROPERTY

         PART I

         CHAPTER I—“AT HOME” AT OLD JOLYON’S

         CHAPTER II—OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA

         CHAPTER III—DINNER AT SWITHIN’S

         CHAPTER IV—PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE

         CHAPTER V—A FORSYTE MÉNAGE

         CHAPTER VI—JAMES AT LARGE

         CHAPTER VII—OLD JOLYON’S PECCADILLO

         CHAPTER VIII—PLANS OF THE HOUSE

         CHAPTER IX—DEATH OF AUNT ANN


         PART II

         CHAPTER I—PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE

         CHAPTER II—JUNE’S TREAT

         CHAPTER III—DRIVE WITH SWITHIN

         CHAPTER IV—JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF

         CHAPTER V—SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND

         CHAPTER VI—OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO

         CHAPTER VII—AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY’S

         CHAPTER VIII—DANCE AT ROGER’S

         CHAPTER IX—EVENING AT RICHMOND

         CHAPTER X—DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE

         CHAPTER XI—BOSINNEY ON PAROLE

         CHAPTER XII—JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS

         CHAPTER XIII—PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE

         CHAPTER XIV—SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS


         PART III

         CHAPTER I—MRS. MACANDER’S EVIDENCE

         CHAPTER II—NIGHT IN THE PARK

         CHAPTER III—MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL

         CHAPTER IV—VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO

         CHAPTER V—THE TRIAL

         CHAPTER VI—SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS

         CHAPTER VII—JUNE’S VICTORY

         CHAPTER VIII—BOSINNEY’S DEPARTURE

         CHAPTER IX—IRENE’S RETURN




      THE MAN OF PROPERTY


        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, Jun’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 Jun’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 Jun’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 Jun’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’. 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 Jun’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 Jun’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 £500. 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 (£500) 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.

      “Jun’s not here,” said his father hastily: “went off 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 Jun’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 fiancée. 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’œuvres_. 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’œuvres_ 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. Scoles, 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 Jun’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 naiveté.”

      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. Jun’s marriage
      might depend on it. Irene could not decently stand in the way of
      Jun’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: “Jun’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
      haze 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 MÉNAGE

      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 Molière.

      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 soirée, 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 were 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 è 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’œuvre_ 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 head 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 Jun’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’s 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....”

      Jun’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 Jun’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 charlotte’s
      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’s. 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 fiancé
      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 become the chief
      glory of the upper-middle class. He had literally been forced
      into auctioneering.

      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’s 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 deuce 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 one 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’s 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
      _intriguée_”—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—still
      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’s 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 £5000 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’s 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’s 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 Jun’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’s 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 Jun’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—£12,000.
          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 fête 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.
      Thus:


      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 fit
      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 Jun’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’s 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 quite 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:

      “_June_ 30.

      “DEAR IRENE,
          “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’s 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’s 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 to 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’s 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 Jun’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 Jun’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 Jun’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 Jun’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 _à 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 fiancée. 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
      Jun’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 questions—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.”

      “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 up-stairs that night with the feeling that he had
      gone too far. He was prepared to offer excuses for his words.

      He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their
      room. Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried to
      shape his apology, for he had no intention of letting her see
      that he was nervous.

      But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the
      handle firmly. She must have locked it for some reason, and
      forgotten.

      Entering his dressing-room, where the gas was also lighted and
      burning low, he went quickly to the other door. That too was
      locked. Then he noticed that the camp bed which he occasionally
      used was prepared, and his sleeping-suit laid out upon it. He put
      his hand up to his forehead, and brought it away wet. It dawned
      on him that he was barred out.

      He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily,
      called: “Unlock the door, do you hear? Unlock the door!”

      There was a faint rustling, but no answer.

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

      He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like
      the breathing of a creature threatened by danger.

      There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the
      impossibility of getting at her. He went back to the other door,
      and putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open.
      The door was a new one—he had had them renewed himself, in
      readiness for their coming in after the honeymoon. In a rage he
      lifted his foot to kick in the panel; the thought of the servants
      restrained him, and he felt suddenly that he was beaten.

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

      But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife—with her
      yellow hair flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark
      eyes—standing like an animal at bay. And the whole meaning of her
      act of revolt came to him. She meant it to be for good.

      He could not sit still, and went to the door again. He could
      still hear her, and he called: “Irene! Irene!”

      He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.

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

      Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the
      other door, made a supreme effort to break it open. It creaked,
      but did not yield. He sat down on the stairs and buried his face
      in his hands.

      For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the
      skylight above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly
      towards him down the stairway. He tried to be philosophical.

      Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a
      wife, and he would console himself with other women.

      It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights—he had
      no appetite for these exploits. He had never had much, and he had
      lost the habit. He felt that he could never recover it. His
      hunger could only be appeased by his wife, inexorable and
      frightened, behind these shut doors. No other woman could help
      him.

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

      His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place. Her
      conduct was immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within
      his power. He desired no one but her, and she refused him!

      She must really hate him, then! He had never believed it yet. He
      did not believe it now. It seemed to him incredible. He felt as
      though he had lost for ever his power of judgment. If she, so
      soft and yielding as he had always judged her, could take this
      decided step—what could not happen?

      Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue
      with Bosinney. He did not believe that she was; he could not
      afford to believe such a reason for her conduct—the thought was
      not to be faced.

      It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his
      marital relations public property. Short of the most convincing
      proofs he must still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to
      punish himself. And all the time at heart—he _did_ believe.

      The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched
      against the staircase wall.

      Bosinney was in love with her! He hated the fellow, and would not
      spare him now. He could and would refuse to pay a penny piece
      over twelve thousand and fifty pounds—the extreme limit fixed in
      the correspondence; or rather he would pay, he would pay and sue
      him for damages. He would go to Jobling and Boulter and put the
      matter in their hands. He would ruin the impecunious beggar! And
      suddenly—though what connection between the thoughts?—he
      reflected that Irene had no money either. They were both beggars.
      This gave him a strange satisfaction.

      The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall. She
      was going to bed at last. Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams! If she
      threw the door open wide he would not go in now!

      But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he
      covered his eyes with his hands....

      It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the
      dining-room window gazing gloomily into the Square.

      The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze
      their gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ
      at the corner. It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out
      of fashion, with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on
      and on, though nothing indeed but leaves danced to the tune.

      The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the
      tall houses no one threw her down coppers. She moved the organ
      on, and three doors off began again.

      It was the waltz they had played at Roger’s when Irene had danced
      with Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came
      back to Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been
      drifted to him then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her
      eyes so soft, drawing Bosinney on and on down an endless
      ballroom.

      The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding
      her tune all day—grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding
      it perhaps to Bosinney himself.

      Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked
      back to the window. The tune had mesmerized him, and there came
      into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards
      down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping
      sleeves, that he did not know. She stopped before the organ, took
      out her purse, and gave the woman money.

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

      She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood
      looking at herself in the glass. Her cheeks were flushed as if
      the sun had burned them; her lips were parted in a smile. She
      stretched her arms out as though to embrace herself, with a laugh
      that for all the world was like a sob.

      Soames stepped forward.

      “Very-pretty!” he said.

      But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up
      the stairs. He barred the way.

      “Why such a hurry?” he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of
      hair fallen loose across her ear....

      He hardly recognised her. She seemed on fire, so deep and rich
      the colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual
      blouse she wore.

      She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl. She was breathing
      fast and deep, as though she had been running, and with every
      breath perfume seemed to come from her hair, and from her body,
      like perfume from an opening flower.

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

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

      “Don’t touch me!” she cried.

      He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.

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

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

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

      And Soames stood motionless. What prevented him from following
      her?

      Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down
      from that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for
      yet another glimpse of Irene’s vanished figure, cooling his
      flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung herself on
      his breast—the scent of her still in the air around, and the
      sound of her laugh that was like a sob?


      PART III




      CHAPTER I MRS. MACANDER’S EVIDENCE

      Many people, no doubt, including the editor of the “Ultra
      Vivisectionist,” then in the bloom of its first youth, would say
      that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks
      from his wife’s doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed
      wedded happiness.

      Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used
      to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be
      relieved to learn that he did none of these things. For active
      brutality is not popular with Forsytes; they are too circumspect,
      and, on the whole, too softhearted. And in Soames there was some
      common pride, not sufficient to make him do a really generous
      action, but enough to prevent his indulging in an extremely mean
      one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood. Above all this a true
      Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous. Short of actually
      beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he therefore
      accepted the situation without another word.

      Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the
      office, to sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.

      He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away. The house at
      Robin Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless.
      Soames had brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he
      claimed from him the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.

      A firm of solicitors, Messrs. Freak and Able, had put in a
      defence on Bosinney’s behalf. Admitting the facts, they raised a
      point on the correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology,
      amounted to this: To speak of “a _free_ hand in the terms of this
      correspondence” is an Irish bull.

      By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough
      of legal circles, a good deal of information came to Soames’s ear
      anent this line of policy, the working partner in his firm,
      Bustard, happening to sit next at dinner at Walmisley’s, the
      Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of the Common Law Bar.

      The necessity for talking what is known as “shop,” which comes on
      all lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a
      young and promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum
      to his neighbour, whose name he did not know, for, seated as he
      permanently was in the background, Bustard had practically no
      name.

      He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a “very nice point.”
      He then explained, preserving every professional discretion, the
      riddle in Soames’s case. Everyone, he said, to whom he had
      spoken, thought it a nice point. The issue was small
      unfortunately, “though d——d serious for his client he
      believed”—Walmisley’s champagne was bad but plentiful. A Judge
      would make short work of it, he was afraid. He intended to make a
      big effort—the point was a nice one. What did his neighbour say?

      Bustard, a model of secrecy, said nothing. He related the
      incident to Soames however with some malice, for this quiet man
      was capable of human feeling, ending with his own opinion that
      the point _was_ “a very nice one.”

      In accordance with his resolve, our Forsyte had put his interests
      into the hands of Jobling and Boulter. From the moment of doing
      so he regretted that he had not acted for himself. On receiving a
      copy of Bosinney’s defence he went over to their offices.

      Boulter, who had the matter in hand, Jobling having died some
      years before, told him that in his opinion it was rather a nice
      point; he would like counsel’s opinion on it.

      Soames told him to go to a good man, and they went to Waterbuck,
      Q.C., marking him ten and one, who kept the papers six weeks and
      then wrote as follows:

      “In my opinion the true interpretation of this correspondence
      depends very much on the intention of the parties, and will turn
      upon the evidence given at the trial. I am of opinion that an
      attempt should be made to secure from the architect an admission
      that he understood he was not to spend at the outside more than
      twelve thousand and fifty pounds. With regard to the expression,
      ‘a free hand in the terms of this correspondence,’ to which my
      attention is directed, the point is a nice one; but I am of
      opinion that upon the whole the ruling in ‘Boileau _v_. The
      Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,’ will apply.”

      Upon this opinion they acted, administering interrogatories, but
      to their annoyance Messrs. Freak and Able answered these in so
      masterly a fashion that nothing whatever was admitted and that
      without prejudice.

      It was on October 1 that Soames read Waterbuck’s opinion, in the
      dining-room before dinner.

      It made him nervous; not so much because of the case of “Boileau
      _v_. The Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,” as that the point had lately
      begun to seem to him, too, a nice one; there was about it just
      that pleasant flavour of subtlety so attractive to the best legal
      appetites. To have his own impression confirmed by Waterbuck,
      Q.C., would have disturbed any man.

      He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for
      though autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that
      jubilee year as if it were still high August. It was not pleasant
      to be disturbed; he desired too passionately to set his foot on
      Bosinney’s neck.

      Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at
      Robin Hill, he was never free from the sense of his
      presence—never free from the memory of his worn face with its
      high cheek bones and enthusiastic eyes. It would not be too much
      to say that he had never got rid of the feeling of that night
      when he heard the peacock’s cry at dawn—the feeling that Bosinney
      haunted the house. And every man’s shape that he saw in the dark
      evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George had so
      appropriately named the Buccaneer.

      Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither
      knew, nor asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much
      knowledge. It all seemed subterranean nowadays.

      Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been,
      which he still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should,
      she looked very strange. Her self-possession was wonderful, but
      there were moments when, behind the mask of her face, inscrutable
      as it had always been to him, lurked an expression he had never
      been used to see there.

      She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her
      mistress had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer:
      “No, sir.”

      He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told
      her so. But she took no notice. There was something that angered,
      amazed, yet almost amused him about the calm way in which she
      disregarded his wishes. It was really as if she were hugging to
      herself the thought of a triumph over him.

      He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.’s opinion, and, going
      upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till
      bed-time—she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of
      the servants. She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with
      strange fierceness.

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

      He answered: “I want to know how long this state of things
      between us is to last? I have put up with it long enough.”

      “Will you please leave my room?”

      “Will you treat me as your husband?”

      “No.”

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

      “Do!”

      He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer. Her lips were
      compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her
      bare shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark
      eyes—those eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt,
      and odd, haunting triumph.

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

      He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and
      he saw that she knew too—knew that he was afraid to.

      It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day: how
      such and such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage
      for Parkes; how that long-standing suit of Fryer _v_. Forsyte was
      getting on, which, arising in the preternaturally careful
      disposition of his property by his great uncle Nicholas, who had
      tied it up so that no one could get at it at all, seemed likely
      to remain a source of income for several solicitors till the Day
      of Judgment.

      And how he had called in at Jobson’s, and seen a Boucher sold,
      which he had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall
      Mall.

      He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school.
      It was a habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he
      continued to do it even now, talking for long spells at dinner,
      as though by the volubility of words he could conceal from
      himself the ache in his heart.

      Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when
      she said good-night. He may have had some vague notion that some
      night she would let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a
      husband ought to kiss his wife. Even if she hated him, he at all
      events ought not to put himself in the wrong by neglecting this
      ancient rite.

      And why did she hate him? Even now he could not altogether
      believe it. It was strange to be hated!—the emotion was too
      extreme; yet he hated Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling
      vagabond, that night-wanderer. For in his thoughts Soames always
      saw him lying in wait—wandering. Ah, but he must be in very low
      water! Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen him coming out of a
      third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the mouth!

      During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation,
      which seemed to have no end—unless she should suddenly come to
      her senses—never once did the thought of separating from his wife
      seriously enter his head....

      And the Forsytes! What part did they play in this stage of
      Soames’s subterranean tragedy?

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

      From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing
      daily; laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the
      winter.

      Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and
      culled and pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.

      The end of September began to witness their several returns.

      In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in
      their cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini. The
      following morning saw them back at their vocations.

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

      Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate,
      Mrs. Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been
      away.

      It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next
      evidence of interest.

      It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs. MacAnder,
      Winifred Dartie’s greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with
      young Augustus Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed
      Irene and Bosinney walking from the bracken towards the Sheen
      Gate.

      Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden
      long on a hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a
      bicycle and talk to young Flippard will try the toughest
      constitution; or perhaps the sight of the cool bracken grove,
      whence “those two” were coming down, excited her envy. The cool
      bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak boughs for
      roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn, and
      the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,
      while the deer stole by. The bracken grove of irretrievable
      delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and
      earth! The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump
      fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph
      at summer dusk.

      This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at Jun’s “at
      home,” was not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal. Her
      own marriage, poor thing, had not been successful, but having had
      the good sense and ability to force her husband into pronounced
      error, she herself had passed through the necessary divorce
      proceedings without incurring censure.

      She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in
      one of those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments,
      are gathered incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief
      recreation out of business hours is the discussion of each
      other’s affairs.

      Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was
      bored, for Flippard was a wit. To see “those two” in so unlikely
      a spot was quite a merciful “pick-me-up.”

      At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.

      This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing
      eye and shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering
      the ends of Providence.

      With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost
      distressing power of taking care of herself. She had done more,
      perhaps, in her way than any woman about town to destroy the
      sense of chivalry which still clogs the wheel of civilization. So
      smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as “the little
      MacAnder!”

      Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman’s Club, but
      was by no means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was
      always thinking of her rights. She took her rights unconsciously,
      they came natural to her, and she knew exactly how to make the
      most of them without exciting anything but admiration amongst
      that great class to whom she was affiliated, not precisely
      perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and the true, the
      secret gauge, a sense of property.

      The daughter of a Bedfordshire solicitor, by the daughter of a
      clergyman, she had never, through all the painful experience of
      being married to a very mild painter with a cranky love of
      Nature, who had deserted her for an actress, lost touch with the
      requirements, beliefs, and inner feeling of Society; and, on
      attaining her liberty, she placed herself without effort in the
      very van of Forsyteism.

      Always in good spirits, and “full of information,” she was
      universally welcomed. She excited neither surprise nor
      disapprobation when encountered on the Rhine or at Zermatt,
      either alone, or travelling with a lady and two gentlemen; it was
      felt that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself;
      and the hearts of all Forsytes warmed to that wonderful instinct,
      which enabled her to enjoy everything without giving anything
      away. It was generally felt that to such women as Mrs. MacAnder
      should we look for the perpetuation and increase of our best type
      of woman. She had never had any children.

      If there was one thing more than another that she could not stand
      it was one of those soft women with what men called “charm” about
      them, and for Mrs. Soames she always had an especial dislike.

      Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as
      the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and
      she hated—with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called
      charm seemed to disturb all calculations—the subtle seductiveness
      which she could not altogether overlook in Irene.

      She said, however, that she could see nothing in the woman—there
      was no “go” about her—she would never be able to stand up for
      herself—anyone could take advantage of her, that was plain—she
      could not see in fact what men found to admire!

      She was not really ill-natured, but, in maintaining her position
      after the trying circumstances of her married life, she had found
      it so necessary to be “full of information,” that the idea of
      holding her tongue about “those two” in the Park never occurred
      to her.

      And it so happened that she was dining that very evening at
      Timothy’s, where she went sometimes to “cheer the old things up,”
      as she was wont to put it. The same people were always asked to
      meet her: Winifred Dartie and her husband; Francie, because she
      belonged to the artistic circles, for Mrs. MacAnder was known to
      contribute articles on dress to “The Ladies Kingdom Come”. and
      for her to flirt with, provided they could be obtained, two of
      the Hayman boys, who, though they never said anything, were
      believed to be fast and thoroughly intimate with all that was
      latest in smart Society.

      At twenty-five minutes past seven she turned out the electric
      light in her little hall, and wrapped in her opera cloak with the
      chinchilla collar, came out into the corridor, pausing a moment
      to make sure she had her latch-key. These little self-contained
      flats were convenient; to be sure, she had no light and no air,
      but she could shut it up whenever she liked and go away. There
      was no bother with servants, and she never felt tied as she used
      to when poor, dear Fred was always about, in his mooney way. She
      retained no rancour against poor, dear Fred, he was such a fool;
      but the thought of that actress drew from her, even now, a
      little, bitter, derisive smile.

      Firmly snapping the door to, she crossed the corridor, with its
      gloomy, yellow-ochre walls, and its infinite vista of brown,
      numbered doors. The lift was going down; and wrapped to the ears
      in the high cloak, with every one of her auburn hairs in its
      place, she waited motionless for it to stop at her floor. The
      iron gates clanked open; she entered. There were already three
      occupants, a man in a great white waistcoat, with a large, smooth
      face like a baby’s, and two old ladies in black, with mittened
      hands.

      Mrs. MacAnder smiled at them; she knew everybody; and all these
      three, who had been admirably silent before, began to talk at
      once. This was Mrs. MacAnder’s successful secret. She provoked
      conversation.

      Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued,
      the lift boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face
      protruding through the bars.

      At the bottom they separated, the man in the white waistcoat
      sentimentally to the billiard room, the old ladies to dine and
      say to each other: “A dear little woman!” “Such a rattle!” and
      Mrs. MacAnder to her cab.

      When Mrs. MacAnder dined at Timothy’s, the conversation (although
      Timothy himself could never be induced to be present) took that
      wider, man-of-the-world tone current among Forsytes at large, and
      this, no doubt, was what put her at a premium there.

      Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester found it an exhilarating change. “If
      only,” they said, “Timothy would meet her!” It was felt that she
      would do him good. She could tell you, for instance, the latest
      story of Sir Charles Fiste’s son at Monte Carlo; who was the real
      heroine of Tynemouth Eddy’s fashionable novel that everyone was
      holding up their hands over, and what they were doing in Paris
      about wearing bloomers. She was so sensible, too, knowing all
      about that vexed question, whether to send young Nicholas’ eldest
      into the navy as his mother wished, or make him an accountant as
      his father thought would be safer. She strongly deprecated the
      navy. If you were not exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally
      well connected, they passed you over so disgracefully, and what
      was it after all to look forward to, even if you became an
      admiral—a pittance! An accountant had many more chances, but let
      him be put with a good firm, where there was no risk at starting!

      Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not
      that Mrs. Small or Aunt Hester ever took it. They had indeed no
      money to invest; but it seemed to bring them into such exciting
      touch with the realities of life. It was an event. They would ask
      Timothy, they said. But they never did, knowing in advance that
      it would upset him. Surreptitiously, however, for weeks after
      they would look in that paper, which they took with respect on
      account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see whether
      “Bright’s Rubies” or “The Woollen Mackintosh Company” were up or
      down. Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at
      all; and they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin
      came in, and ask them in voices trembling with curiosity how that
      “Bolivia Lime and Speltrate” was doing—they could not find it in
      the paper.

      And Roger would answer: “What do you want to know for? Some
      trash! You’ll go burning your fingers—investing your money in
      lime, and things you know nothing about! Who told you?” and
      ascertaining what they had been told, he would go away, and,
      making inquiries in the City, would perhaps invest some of his
      own money in the concern.

      It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of
      mutton had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder,
      looking airily round, said: “Oh! and whom do you think I passed
      to-day in Richmond Park? You’ll never guess—Mrs. Soames and—Mr.
      Bosinney. They must have been down to look at the house!”

      Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word. It was the piece
      of evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.

      To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the
      Italian lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of
      Soames’s rupture with his architect. She could not tell,
      therefore, the profound impression her words would make.

      Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes
      from face to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words. On
      either side of her a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face
      turned towards his plate, ate his mutton steadily.

      These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that
      they were known as the Dromios. They never talked, and seemed
      always completely occupied in doing nothing. It was popularly
      supposed that they were cramming for an important examination.
      They walked without hats for long hours in the Gardens attached
      to their house, books in their hands, a fox-terrier at their
      heels, never saying a word, and smoking all the time. Every
      morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down Campden Hill
      on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every
      morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they
      cantered up again. Every evening, wherever they had dined, they
      might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the
      balustrade of the Alhambra promenade.

      They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing
      their lives, apparently perfectly content.

      Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of
      gentlemen, they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder,
      and said in precisely the same voice: “Have you seen the...?”

      Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down
      her fork; and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her
      plate. Mrs. MacAnder, however, with presence of mind, said
      instantly: “I must have a little more of that nice mutton.”

      But afterwards in the drawing—room she sat down by Mrs. Small,
      determined to get to the bottom of the matter. And she began:

      “What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic
      temperament! Soames is a really lucky man!”

      Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for
      that inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with
      outsiders.

      Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle
      of her whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:

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




      CHAPTER II NIGHT IN THE PARK

      Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the
      very thing to make her guest “more intriguee than ever,” it is
      difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken.

      It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even
      among themselves—to use the word Soames had invented to
      characterize to himself the situation, it was “subterranean.”

      Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder’s encounter in Richmond Park,
      to all of them—save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept—to
      James on his domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to
      George the wild one, on his daily adventure from the bow window
      at the Haversnake to the billiard room at the “Red Pottle,” was
      it known that “those two” had gone to extremes.

      George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions
      still current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more
      accurately than any one when he said to his brother Eustace that
      “the Buccaneer” was “going it”. he expected Soames was about “fed
      up.”

      It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done? He
      ought perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be
      deplorable.

      Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to
      recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken.
      In this impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and
      nothing to each other; in fact, to pass it over.

      By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression
      might be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and
      there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to
      show her coldness. Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James
      would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his son’s
      misfortune caused him.

      “_I_ can’t tell,” he would say; “it worries me out of my life.
      There’ll be a scandal, and that’ll do him no good. I shan’t say
      anything to him. There might be nothing in it. What do you think?
      She’s very artistic, they tell me. What? Oh, you’re a ‘regular
      Juley’! Well, I don’t know; I expect the worst. This is what
      comes of having no children. I knew how it would be from the
      first. They never told me they didn’t mean to have any
      children—nobody tells me anything!”

      On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with
      worry, he would breathe into the counterpane. Clad in his
      nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he
      resembled some long white bird.

      “Our Father—,” he repeated, turning over and over again the
      thought of this possible scandal.

      Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the
      blame of the tragedy down to family interference. What business
      had that lot—he began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch,
      including young Jolyon and his daughter, as “that lot”—to
      introduce a person like this Bosinney into the family? (He had
      heard George’s soubriquet, “The Buccaneer,” but he could make
      nothing of that—the young man was an architect.)

      He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always
      looked up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what
      he had expected.

      Not having his eldest brother’s force of character, he was more
      sad than angry. His great comfort was to go to Winifred’s, and
      take the little Darties in his carriage over to Kensington
      Gardens, and there, by the Round Pond, he could often be seen
      walking with his eyes fixed anxiously on little Publius Dartie’s
      sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted with a penny, as
      though convinced that it would never again come to shore; while
      little Publius—who, James delighted to say, was not a bit like
      his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to
      bet another that it never would, having found that it always did.
      And James would make the bet; he always paid—sometimes as many as
      three or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed never
      to pall on little Publius—and always in paying he said: “Now,
      that’s for your money-box. Why, you’re getting quite a rich man!”
      The thought of his little grandson’s growing wealth was a real
      pleasure to him. But little Publius knew a sweet-shop, and a
      trick worth two of that.

      And they would walk home across the Park, James’ figure, with
      high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its
      tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the
      robust child-figures of Imogen and little Publius.

      But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James.
      Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day
      after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom
      from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets.

      The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like
      warmth of the nights.

      On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day
      deepened after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes. There was no
      moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped
      around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes,
      stirred not in the still, warm air. All London had poured into
      the Park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs.

      Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the
      paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently
      out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery
      trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of
      shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the
      soft darkness.

      To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but
      part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like
      the confused beating of hearts, came forth. But when that murmur
      reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and
      ceased; their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching,
      probing the blackness. Suddenly, as though drawn by invisible
      hands, they, too, stepped over the railing, and, silent as
      shadows, were gone from the light.

      The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town,
      was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of
      multitudes of struggling human atoms; for in spite of the
      disapproval of that great body of Forsytes, the Municipal
      Council—to whom Love had long been considered, next to the Sewage
      Question, the gravest danger to the community—a process was going
      on that night in the Park, and in a hundred other parks, without
      which the thousand factories, churches, shops, taxes, and drains,
      of which they were custodians, were as arteries without blood, a
      man without a heart.

      The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love,
      hiding under the trees, away from the trustees of their
      remorseless enemy, the “sense of property,” were holding a
      stealthy revel, and Soames, returning from Bayswater—for he had
      been alone to dine at Timothy’s walking home along the water,
      with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood driven from
      his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses. He thought of
      writing to _The Times_ the next morning, to draw the attention of
      the Editor to the condition of our parks. He did not, however,
      for he had a horror of seeing his name in print.

      But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the
      half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid
      stimulant. He left the path along the water and stole under the
      trees, along the deep shadow of little plantations, where the
      boughs of chestnut trees hung their great leaves low, and there
      was blacker refuge, shaping his course in circles which had for
      their object a stealthy inspection of chairs side by side,
      against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his
      approach.

      Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where,
      in full lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple
      who never moved, the woman’s face buried on the man’s neck—a
      single form, like a carved emblem of passion, silent and
      unashamed.

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

      In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought?
      Bread for hunger—light in darkness? Who knows what he expected to
      find—impersonal knowledge of the human heart—the end of his
      private subterranean tragedy—for, again, who knew, but that each
      dark couple, unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?

      But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was
      seeking—the wife of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a
      common wench! Such thoughts were inconceivable; and from tree to
      tree, with his noiseless step, he passed.

      Once he was sworn at; once the whisper, “If only it could always
      be like this!” sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he
      waited there, patient and dogged, for the two to move. But it was
      only a poor thin slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse who
      passed him, clinging to her lover’s arm.

      A hundred other lovers too whispered that hope in the stillness
      of the trees, a hundred other lovers clung to each other.

      But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the
      path, and left that seeking for he knew not what.




      CHAPTER III MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL

      Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte,
      found at times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for
      those country jaunts and researches into Nature, without having
      prosecuted which no watercolour artist ever puts brush to paper.

      He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his colour-box into
      the Botanical Gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a
      monkey-puzzler or in the lee of some India-rubber plant, he would
      spend long hours sketching.

      An Art critic who had recently been looking at his work had
      delivered himself as follows:

      “In a way your drawings are very good; tone and colour, in some
      of them certainly quite a feeling for Nature. But, you see,
      they’re so scattered; you’ll never get the public to look at
      them. Now, if you’d taken a definite subject, such as ‘London by
      Night,’ or ‘The Crystal Palace in the Spring,’ and made a regular
      series, the public would have known at once what they were
      looking at. I can’t lay too much stress upon that. All the men
      who are making great names in Art, like Crum Stone or Bleeder,
      are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by specializing and
      putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so that the
      public know at once where to go. And this stands to reason, for
      if a man’s a collector he doesn’t want people to smell at the
      canvas to find out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be
      able to say at once, ‘A capital Forsyte!’ It is all the more
      important for you to be careful to choose a subject that they can
      lay hold of on the spot, since there’s no very marked originality
      in your style.”

      Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried
      rose leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a
      bit of faded damask, listened with his dim smile.

      Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry
      expression on her thin face, he said:

      “You see, dear?”

      “I do _not_,” she answered in her staccato voice, that still had
      a little foreign accent; “your style _has_ originality.”

      The critic looked at her, smiled’ deferentially, and said no
      more. Like everyone else, he knew their history.

      The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary
      to all that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held
      good in his Art, but some strange, deep instinct moved him
      against his will to turn them to profit.

      He discovered therefore one morning that an idea had come to him
      for making a series of watercolour drawings of London. How the
      idea had arisen he could not tell; and it was not till the
      following year, when he had completed and sold them at a very
      fair price, that in one of his impersonal moods, he found himself
      able to recollect the Art critic, and to discover in his own
      achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.

      He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had
      already made so many studies, and chose the little artificial
      pond, sprinkled now with an autumn shower of red and yellow
      leaves, for though the gardeners longed to sweep them off, they
      could not reach them with their brooms. The rest of the gardens
      they swept bare enough, removing every morning Nature’s rain of
      leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires rose the
      sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo’s note for spring, the
      scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the
      fall. The gardeners’ tidy souls could not abide the gold and
      green and russet pattern on the grass. The gravel paths must lie
      unstained, ordered, methodical, without knowledge of the
      realities of life, nor of that slow and beautiful decay which
      flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with fallen glories,
      whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.

      Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it
      fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.

      But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised
      Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.

      And so young Jolyon found them.

      Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was
      disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand
      occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at
      work.

      A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed
      on the ground. A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and,
      taking shelter behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.

      His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist
      should, at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of
      his work, and he found himself looking furtively at this unknown
      dame.

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

      He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face
      with large dark eyes and soft lips. A black “picture” hat
      concealed the hair; her figure was lightly poised against the
      back of the bench, her knees were crossed; the tip of a
      patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt. There was
      something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of this
      lady, but young Jolyon’s attention was chiefly riveted by the
      look on her face, which reminded him of his wife. It was as
      though its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for
      her. It troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and
      chivalry. Who was she? And what doing there, alone?

      Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and
      shy, found in the Regent’s Park, came by on their way to lawn
      tennis, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of
      admiration. A loitering gardener halted to do something
      unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass; he, too, wanted an excuse
      for peeping. A gentleman, old, and, by his hat, a professor of
      horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her long and
      stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.

      With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation.
      She looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who
      passed would look at her like that.

      Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds
      out to men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the “devil’s
      beauty” so highly prized among the first Forsytes of the land;
      neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with
      the box of chocolate; it was not of the spiritually passionate,
      or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house-decoration and
      modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the playwright
      material for the production of the interesting and neurasthenic
      figure, who commits suicide in the last act.

      In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its
      sensuous purity, this woman’s face reminded him of Titian’s
      “Heavenly Love,” a reproduction of which hung over the sideboard
      in his dining-room. And her attraction seemed to be in this soft
      passivity, in the feeling she gave that to pressure she must
      yield.

      For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees
      dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close
      on grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime? Then her
      charming face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a
      lover’s jealousy, young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the
      grass.

      Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the
      long clasp of their hands. They sat down close together, linked
      for all their outward discretion. He heard the rapid murmur of
      their talk; but what they said he could not catch.

      He had rowed in the galley himself! He knew the long hours of
      waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the
      tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover.

      It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that
      this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and
      women about town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up
      ravening, and are surfeited and asleep again in six weeks. This
      was the real thing! This was what had happened to himself! Out of
      this anything might come!

      Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable
      in her passivity, sat looking over the grass.

      Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who
      would never stir a step for herself? Who had given him all
      herself, and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away
      with him!

      It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: “But,
      darling, it would ruin you!” For he himself had experienced to
      the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman’s heart
      that she is a drag on the man she loves.

      And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to
      his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying
      to remember the notes of spring: Joy—tragedy? Which—which?

      And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.

      “And where does Soames come in?” young Jolyon thought. “People
      think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband!
      Little they know of women! She’s eating, after starvation—taking
      her revenge! And Heaven help her—for he’ll take his.”

      He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw
      them walking away, their hands stealthily joined....

      At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
      mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June
      recovered to a great extent her health and spirits. In the
      hotels, filled with British Forsytes—for old Jolyon could not
      bear a “set of Germans,” as he called all foreigners—she was
      looked upon with respect—the only grand-daughter of that
      fine-looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr. Forsyte. She did not
      mix freely with people—to mix freely with people was not Jun’s
      habit—but she formed some friendships, and notably one in the
      Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.

      Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot,
      in the institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own
      trouble.

      Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval;
      for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst
      “lame ducks” worried him. Would she never make a friendship or
      take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to
      her?

      “Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,” he called it. He often,
      however, brought home grapes or roses, and presented them to
      “Mam’zelle” with an ingratiating twinkle.

      Towards the end of September, in spite of Jun’s disapproval,
      Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St.
      Luc, to which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so
      deeply to heart that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris. Here,
      in contemplation of the “Venus de Milo” and the “Madeleine,” she
      shook off her depression, and when, towards the middle of
      October, they returned to town, her grandfather believed that he
      had effected a cure.

      No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope
      Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed
      and brooding manner. She would sit, staring in front of her, her
      chin on her hand, like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent,
      while all around in the electric light, then just installed,
      shone the great, drawing-room brocaded up to the frieze, full of
      furniture from Baple and Pullbred’s. And in the huge gilt mirror
      were reflected those Dresden china groups of young men in tight
      knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies nursing on
      their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was a
      bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate
      taste. He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any Forsyte
      of them all, had moved with the times, but he could never forget
      that he had bought these groups at Jobson’s, and given a lot of
      money for them. He often said to June, with a sort of
      disillusioned contempt:

      “_You_ don’t care about them! They’re not the gimcrack things you
      and your friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!” He was
      not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for
      solid reasons that it was sound.

      One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go
      round to Timothy’s. She persuaded herself that it was her duty to
      call there, and cheer him with an account of all her travels; but
      in reality she went because she knew of no other place where, by
      some random speech, or roundabout question, she could glean news
      of Bosinney.

      They received her most cordially: And how was her dear
      grandfather? He had not been to see them since May. Her Uncle
      Timothy was very poorly, he had had a lot of trouble with the
      chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the stupid man had let the soot
      down the chimney! It had quite upset her uncle.

      June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping,
      that they would speak of Bosinney.

      But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small
      let fall no word, neither did she question June about him. In
      desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were
      in town—she had not yet been to see anyone.

      It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they
      had not been away at all. There was some little difficulty about
      the house, she believed. June had heard, no doubt! She had better
      ask her Aunt Juley!

      June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her
      hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts. In answer
      to the girl’s look she maintained a strange silence, and when she
      spoke it was to ask June whether she had worn night-socks up in
      those high hotels where it must be so cold of a night.

      June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and
      rose to leave.

      Mrs. Small’s infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to
      her than anything that could have been said.

      Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs.
      Baynes in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action
      against Bosinney over the decoration of the house.

      Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming
      effect; as though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new
      hope for herself. She learnt that the case was expected to come
      on in about a month, and there seemed little or no prospect of
      Bosinney’s success.

      “And whatever he’ll do I can’t think,” said Mrs. Baynes; “it’s
      very dreadful for him, you know—he’s got no money—he’s very hard
      up. And we can’t help him, I’m sure. I’m told the money-lenders
      won’t lend if you have no security, and he has none—none at all.”

      Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing
      of autumn organization, her writing-table literally strewn with
      the menus of charity functions. She looked meaningly at June,
      with her round eyes of parrot-grey.

      The sudden flush that rose on the girl’s intent young face—she
      must have seen spring up before her a great hope—the sudden
      sweetness of her smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after
      years (Baynes was knighted when he built that public Museum of
      Art which has given so much employment to officials, and so
      little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was
      designed).

      The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking
      open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory,
      too, of all that came after, often intruded itself,
      unaccountably, inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was
      set upon the most important things.

      This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon
      witnessed the meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day,
      too, old Jolyon paid a visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard,
      and Forsyte, in the Poultry. Soames was not in, he had gone down
      to Somerset House; Bustard was buried up to the hilt in papers
      and that inaccessible apartment, where he was judiciously placed,
      in order that he might do as much work as possible; but James was
      in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously turning
      over the pleadings in Forsyte _v_. Bosinney.

      This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the “nice
      point,” enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his
      good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the
      Bench he would not pay much attention to it. But he was afraid
      that this Bosinney would go bankrupt and Soames would have to
      find the money after all, and costs into the bargain. And behind
      this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble,
      lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad
      dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible
      sign.

      He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: “How are
      you, Jolyon? Haven’t seen you for an age. You’ve been to
      Switzerland, they tell me. This young Bosinney, he’s got himself
      into a mess. I knew how it would be!” He held out the papers,
      regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom.

      Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James
      looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while.

      Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump
      amongst a mass of affidavits in “_re_ Buncombe, deceased,” one of
      the many branches of that parent and profitable tree, “Fryer _v_.
      Forsyte.”

      “I don’t know what Soames is about,” he said, “to make a fuss
      over a few hundred pounds. I thought he was a man of property.”

      James’ long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son
      to be attacked in such a spot.

      “It’s not the money,” he began, but meeting his brother’s glance,
      direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.

      There was a silence.

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

      James’ curiosity was roused at once. Perhaps nothing in this life
      was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme deal
      with property, the final inventory of a man’s belongings, the
      last word on what he was worth. He sounded the bell.

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

      “You going to make some alterations?” And through his mind there
      flashed the thought: “Now, am I worth as much as he?”

      Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted
      his long legs regretfully.

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

      “I don’t know where you get your information from,” answered old
      Jolyon sharply. “When’s this action coming on? Next month? I
      can’t tell what you’ve got in your minds. You must manage your
      own affairs; but if you take my advice, you’ll settle it out of
      Court. Good-bye!” With a cold handshake he was gone.

      James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret
      anxious image, began again to bite his finger.

      Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery
      Company, and sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through.
      He answered “Down-by-the-starn” Hemmings so tartly when the
      latter, seeing his Chairman seated there, entered with the new
      Superintendent’s first report, that the Secretary withdrew with
      regretful dignity; and sending for the transfer clerk, blew him
      up till the poor youth knew not where to look.

      It was not—by George—as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him
      know, for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come
      down to that office, and think that he was God Almighty. He
      (Down-by-the-starn) had been head of that office for more years
      than a boy like him could count, and if he thought that when he
      had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he
      did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.

      On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the
      long, mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed,
      tortoiseshell eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his
      gold pencil moving down the clauses of his Will.

      It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious
      little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a
      man’s possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little
      paragraph in the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with
      a hundred thousand pounds.

      A simple affair. Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand,
      and “as to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether
      realty or personalty, or partaking of the nature of either—upon
      trust to pay the proceeds rents annual produce dividends or
      interest thereof and thereon to my said grand-daughter June
      Forsyte or her assigns during her life to be for her sole use and
      benefit and without, etc... and from and after her death or
      decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over the
      said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys
      stocks funds investments and securities or such as shall then
      stand for and represent the same unto such person or persons
      whether one or more for such intents purposes and uses and
      generally in such manner way and form in all respects as the said
      June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall by her last Will and
      Testament or any writing or writings in the nature of a Will
      testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made
      signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose
      of the same And in default etc.... Provided always...” and so on,
      in seven folios of brief and simple phraseology.

      The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days. He had
      foreseen almost every contingency.

      Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took
      half a sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil
      note; then buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called
      and drove to the offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln’s Inn
      Fields. Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the
      firm, and old Jolyon was closeted with him for half an hour.

      He had kept the hansom, and on coming out, gave the driver the
      address—3, Wistaria Avenue.

      He felt a strange, slow satisfaction, as though he had scored a
      victory over James and the man of property. They should not poke
      their noses into his affairs any more; he had just cancelled
      their trusteeships of his Will; he would take the whole of his
      business out of their hands, and put it into the hands of young
      Herring, and he would move the business of his Companies too. If
      that young Soames were such a man of property, he would never
      miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white moustache
      old Jolyon grimly smiled. He felt that what he was doing was in
      the nature of retributive justice, richly deserved.

      Slowly, surely, with the secret inner process that works the
      destruction of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his
      happiness, his will, his pride, had corroded the comely edifice
      of his philosophy. Life had worn him down on one side, till, like
      that family of which he was the head, he had lost balance.

      To him, borne northwards towards his son’s house, the thought of
      the new disposition of property, which he had just set in motion,
      appeared vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, levelled
      at that family and that Society, of which James and his son
      seemed to him the representatives. He had made a restitution to
      young Jolyon, and restitution to young Jolyon satisfied his
      secret craving for revenge—revenge against Time, sorrow, and
      interference, against all that incalculable sum of disapproval
      that had been bestowed by the world for fifteen years on his only
      son. It presented itself as the one possible way of asserting
      once more the domination of his will; of forcing James, and
      Soames, and the family, and all those hidden masses of Forsytes—a
      great stream rolling against the single dam of his obstinacy—to
      recognise once and for all that _he would be master_. It was
      sweet to think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer
      man by far than that son of James, that “man of property.” And it
      was sweet to give to Jo, for he loved his son.

      Neither young Jolyon nor his wife were in (young Jolyon indeed
      was not back from the Botanical), but the little maid told him
      that she expected the master at any moment:

      “He’s always at ’ome to tea, sir, to play with the children.”

      Old Jolyon said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in
      the faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer
      chintzes were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all
      their threadbare deficiencies. He longed to send for the
      children; to have them there beside him, their supple bodies
      against his knees; to hear Jolly’s: “Hallo, Gran!” and see his
      rush; and feel Holly’s soft little hand stealing up against his
      cheek. But he would not. There was solemnity in what he had come
      to do, and until it was over he would not play. He amused himself
      by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going to
      restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from everything
      in that little house; how he could fill these rooms, or others in
      some larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple and
      Pullbred’s; how he could send little Jolly to Harrow and Oxford
      (he no longer had faith in Eton and Cambridge, for his son had
      been there); how he could procure little Holly the best musical
      instruction, the child had a remarkable aptitude.

      As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his
      heart, he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the
      little walled strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of
      leaves before its time, stood with gaunt branches in the
      slow-gathering mist of the autumn afternoon. The dog Balthasar,
      his tail curled tightly over a piebald, furry back, was walking
      at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and at intervals
      placing his leg for support against the wall.

      And old Jolyon mused.

      What pleasure was there left but to give? It was pleasant to
      give, when you could find one who would be thankful for what you
      gave—one of your own flesh and blood! There was no such
      satisfaction to be had out of giving to those who did not belong
      to you, to those who had no claim on you! Such giving as that was
      a betrayal of the individualistic convictions and actions of his
      life, of all his enterprise, his labour, and his moderation, of
      the great and proud fact that, like tens of thousands of Forsytes
      before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens of thousands
      in the future, he had always made his own, and held his own, in
      the world.

      And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered
      foliage of the laurels, the black-stained grass-plot, the
      progress of the dog Balthasar, all the suffering of the fifteen
      years during which he had been baulked of legitimate enjoyment
      mingled its gall with the sweetness of the approaching moment.

      Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from
      long hours in the open air. On hearing that his father was in the
      drawing room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsyte was at
      home, and being informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of
      relief. Then putting his painting materials carefully in the
      little coat-closet out of sight, he went in.

      With characteristic decision old Jolyon came at once to the
      point. “I’ve been altering my arrangements, Jo,” he said. “You
      can cut your coat a bit longer in the future—I’m settling a
      thousand a year on you at once. June will have fifty thousand at
      my death; and you the rest. That dog of yours is spoiling the
      garden. I shouldn’t keep a dog, if I were you!”

      The dog Balthasar, seated in the centre of the lawn, was
      examining his tail.

      Young Jolyon looked at the animal, but saw him dimly, for his
      eyes were misty.

      “Yours won’t come short of a hundred thousand, my boy,” said old
      Jolyon; “I thought you’d better know. I haven’t much longer to
      live at my age. I shan’t allude to it again. How’s your wife?
      And—give her my love.”

      Young Jolyon put his hand on his father’s shoulder, and, as
      neither spoke, the episode closed.

      Having seen his father into a hansom, young Jolyon came back to
      the drawing-room and stood, where old Jolyon had stood, looking
      down on the little garden. He tried to realize all that this
      meant to him, and, Forsyte that he was, vistas of property were
      opened out in his brain; the years of half rations through which
      he had passed had not sapped his natural instincts. In extremely
      practical form, he thought of travel, of his wife’s costume, the
      children’s education, a pony for Jolly, a thousand things; but in
      the midst of all he thought, too, of Bosinney and his mistress,
      and the broken song of the thrush. Joy—tragedy! Which? Which?

      The old past—the poignant, suffering, passionate, wonderful past,
      that no money could buy, that nothing could restore in all its
      burning sweetness—had come back before him.

      When his wife came in he went straight up to her and took her in
      his arms; and for a long time he stood without speaking, his eyes
      closed, pressing her to him, while she looked at him with a
      wondering, adoring, doubting look in her eyes.




      CHAPTER IV VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO

      The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last
      asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.

      He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the
      town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square
      even were barely visible from the dining-room window.

      He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not
      swallow attacked him. Had he been right to yield to his
      overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the
      resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who
      was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?

      He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from
      before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands—of
      her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never
      heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the
      odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt, as he
      stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before
      silently slinking away.

      And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at
      himself.

      Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie’s, he had taken Mrs.
      MacAnder into dinner. She had said to him, looking in his face
      with her sharp, greenish eyes: “And so your wife is a great
      friend of that Mr. Bosinney’s?”

      Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her
      words.

      They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the
      peculiar perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer
      desire.

      Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder’s words he might never
      have done what he had done. Without their incentive and the
      accident of finding his wife’s door for once unlocked, which had
      enabled him to steal upon her asleep.

      Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them
      again. One thought comforted him: No one would know—it was not
      the sort of thing that she would speak about.

      And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which
      needed so imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought,
      started rolling once more with the reading of his letters, those
      nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant importance
      at the back of his mind. The incident was really not of great
      moment; women made a fuss about it in books; but in the cool
      judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as
      he recollected often received praise in the Divorce Court, he had
      but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent
      her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing
      Bosinney, from....

      No, he did not regret it.

      Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken,
      the rest would be comparatively—comparatively....

      He, rose and walked to the window. His nerve had been shaken. The
      sound of smothered sobbing was in his ears again. He could not
      get rid of it.

      He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go
      into the City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square
      station.

      In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men
      the smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened _The Times_
      with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and,
      barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news.

      He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous
      day with a more than usually long list of offences. He read of
      three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as
      eleven rapes—a surprisingly high number—in addition to many less
      conspicuous crimes, to be tried during a coming Sessions; and
      from one piece of news he went on to another, keeping the paper
      well before his face.

      And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of
      Irene’s tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.

      The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary
      affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin and
      Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the New
      Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than
      knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined,
      and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and
      a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.’s chambers, attended by
      Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C.,
      himself.

      The case of Forsyte _v_. Bosinney was expected to be reached on
      the morrow, before Mr. Justice Bentham.

      Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great
      legal knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they
      could have to try the action. He was a “strong” Judge.

      Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude
      neglect of Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of
      attention, by instinct or the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling
      him to be a man of property.

      He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already
      expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great
      extent on the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well
      directed remarks he advised Soames not to be too careful in
      giving that evidence. “A little bluffness, Mr. Forsyte,” he said,
      “a little bluffness,” and after he had spoken he laughed firmly,
      closed his lips tight, and scratched his head just below where he
      had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the
      gentleman-farmer for whom he loved to be taken. He was considered
      perhaps the leading man in breach of promise cases.

      Soames used the underground again in going home.

      The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station. Through the
      still, thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few,
      grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to
      their mouths; crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver,
      haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light that seemed to drown in
      vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed dim-shaped
      ever and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to
      their burrows.

      And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud
      of fog, took no notice of each other. In the great warren, each
      rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more
      expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven
      underground.

      One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station
      door.

      Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: “Poor
      devil! looks as if he were having a bad time!” Their kind hearts
      beat a stroke faster for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the
      fog; but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time
      nor money to spare for any suffering but their own.

      Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an
      interest in that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat
      half hid a face reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over
      which a hand stole now and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew
      the resolution that kept him waiting there. But the waiting lover
      (if lover he were) was used to policemen’s scrutiny, or too
      absorbed in his anxiety, for he never flinched. A hardened case,
      accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and fog, and cold, if only
      his mistress came at last. Foolish lover! Fogs last until the
      spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere; gnawing
      fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at
      home!

      “Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!”

      So any respectable Forsyte. Yet, if that sounder citizen could
      have listened at the waiting lover’s heart, out there in the fog
      and the cold, he would have said again: “Yes, poor devil he’s
      having a bad time!”

      Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along
      Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home. He
      reached his house at five.

      His wife was not in. She had gone out a quarter of an hour
      before. Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog! What
      was the meaning of that?

      He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to
      the soul, trying to read the evening paper. A book was no good—in
      daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his. From
      the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some
      comfort. “Suicide of an actress”—“Grave indisposition of a
      Statesman” (that chronic sufferer)—“Divorce of an army
      officer”—“Fire in a colliery”—he read them all. They helped him a
      little—prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural
      taste.

      It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.

      The incident of the night before had long lost its importance
      under stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog. But
      now that Irene was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing
      came back to him, and he felt nervous at the thought of facing
      her.

      She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her
      knees, its high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick
      veil.

      She neither turned to look at him nor spoke. No ghost or stranger
      could have passed more silently.

      Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not
      coming down; she was having the soup in her room.

      For once Soames did not “change”; it was, perhaps, the first time
      in his life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs,
      and, not even noticing them, he brooded long over his wine. He
      sent Bilson to light a fire in his picture-room, and presently
      went up there himself.

      Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst
      these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks,
      around the little room, he had found at length his peace of mind.
      He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an
      undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face
      to the light. There had been a movement in Turners, but he had
      not been able to make up his mind to part with it. He stood for a
      long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his
      stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding
      it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found,
      perhaps, that it came to too little. He took it down from the
      easel to put it back against the wall; but, in crossing the room,
      stopped, for he seemed to hear sobbing.

      It was nothing—only the sort of thing that had been bothering him
      in the morning. And soon after, putting the high guard before the
      blazing fire, he stole downstairs.

      Fresh for the morrow! was his thought. It was long before he went
      to sleep....

      It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on
      the events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.

      The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed
      the day reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes’
      Gardens. Since a recent crisis in his financial affairs he had
      been kept on parole by Roger, and compelled to reside “at home.”

      Towards five o’clock he went out, and took train at South
      Kensington Station (for everyone to-day went Underground). His
      intention was to dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at
      the Red Pottle—that unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good
      gilt restaurant.

      He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his
      more usual St. James’s Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street by
      better lighted ways.

      On the platform his eyes—for in combination with a composed and
      fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on
      the look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour—his eyes were
      attracted by a man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment,
      staggered rather than walked towards the exit.

      “So ho, my bird!” said George to himself; “why, it’s “the
      Buccaneer!”” and he put his big figure on the trail. Nothing
      afforded him greater amusement than a drunken man.

      Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun
      around, and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left. He
      was too late. A porter caught him by the coat; the train was
      already moving on.

      George’s practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad
      in a grey fur coat at the carriage window. It was Mrs. Soames—and
      George felt that this was interesting!

      And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever—up the
      stairs, past the ticket collector into the street. In that
      progress, however, his feelings underwent a change; no longer
      merely curious and amused, he felt sorry for the poor fellow he
      was shadowing. “The Buccaneer” was not drunk, but seemed to be
      acting under the stress of violent emotion; he was talking to
      himself, and all that George could catch were the words “Oh,
      God!” Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where
      going; but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind;
      and from being merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt
      that he must see the poor chap through.

      He had “taken the knock”—“taken the knock!” And he wondered what
      on earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been
      telling him in the railway carriage. She had looked bad enough
      herself! It made George sorry to think of her travelling on with
      her trouble all alone.

      He followed close behind Bosinney’s elbow—tall, burly figure,
      saying nothing, dodging warily—and shadowed him out into the fog.

      There was something here beyond a jest! He kept his head
      admirably, in spite of some excitement, for in addition to
      compassion, the instincts of the chase were roused within him.

      Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare—a vast muffled
      blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where,
      all around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and
      sudden shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a
      light showed like a dim island in an infinite dark sea.

      And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and
      fast after him walked George. If the fellow meant to put his
      “twopenny” under a ’bus, he would stop it if he could! Across the
      street and back the hunted creature strode, not groping as other
      men were groping in that gloom, but driven forward as though the
      faithful George behind wielded a knout; and this chase after a
      haunted man began to have for George the strangest fascination.

      But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever
      afterwards caused it to remain green in his mind. Brought to a
      stand-still in the fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light
      on these proceedings. What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in
      the train was now no longer dark. George understood from those
      mutterings that Soames had exercised his rights over an estranged
      and unwilling wife in the greatest—the supreme act of property.

      His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed
      him; he guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion
      and horror in Bosinney’s heart. And he thought: “Yes, it’s a bit
      thick! I don’t wonder the poor fellow is half-cracked!”

      He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions
      in Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in
      that gulf of darkness. Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and
      George, in whose patience was a touch of strange brotherliness,
      took his stand behind. He was not lacking in a certain delicacy—a
      sense of form—that did not permit him to intrude upon this
      tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion above, his fur collar
      hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy redness of his
      cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
      compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on
      the way to their clubs—men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of
      fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished.
      Then even in his compassion George’s Quilpish humour broke forth
      in a sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and
      say:

      “Hi, you Johnnies! You don’t often see a show like this! Here’s a
      poor devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty
      little story of her husband; walk up, walk up! He’s taken the
      knock, you see.”

      In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned
      as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled
      by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what
      was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth
      getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down. For in
      George was all that contempt of the middle-class—especially of
      the married middle-class—peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike
      spirits in its ranks.

      But he began to be bored. Waiting was not what he had bargained
      for.

      “After all,” he thought, “the poor chap will get over it; not the
      first time such a thing has happened in this little city!” But
      now his quarry again began muttering words of violent hate and
      anger. And following a sudden impulse George touched him on the
      shoulder.

      Bosinney spun round.

      “Who are you? What do you want?”

      George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas
      lamps, in the light of that everyday world of which he was so
      hardy a connoisseur; but in this fog, where all was gloomy and
      unreal, where nothing had that matter-of-fact value associated by
      Forsytes with earth, he was a victim to strange qualms, and as he
      tried to stare back into the eyes of this maniac, he thought:

      “If I see a bobby, I’ll hand him over; he’s not fit to be at
      large.”

      But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and
      George followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more
      than ever set on tracking him down.

      “He can’t go on long like this,” he thought. “It’s God’s own
      miracle he’s not been run over already.” He brooded no more on
      policemen, a sportsman’s sacred fire alive again within him.

      Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace;
      but his pursuer perceived more method in his madness—he was
      clearly making his way westwards.

      “He’s really going for Soames!” thought George. The idea was
      attractive. It would be a sporting end to such a chase. He had
      always disliked his cousin.

      The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made
      him leap aside. He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer,
      or anyone. Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail
      through vapour that blotted out everything but the shadow of the
      hunted man and the dim moon of the nearest lamp.

      Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew
      himself to be in Piccadilly. Here he could find his way
      blindfold; and freed from the strain of geographical uncertainty,
      his mind returned to Bosinney’s trouble.

      Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting,
      as it were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to
      him a memory of his youth. A memory, poignant still, that brought
      the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into
      the reek and blackness of this London fog—the memory of a night
      when in the darkest shadow of a lawn he had overheard from a
      woman’s lips that he was not her sole possessor. And for a moment
      George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again, with
      hell in his heart, and his face to the sweet-smelling, dewy
      grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon.

      A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and
      say, “Come, old boy. Time cures all. Let’s go and drink it off!”

      But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out
      of blackness, and into blackness disappeared. And suddenly George
      perceived that he had lost Bosinney. He ran forward and back,
      felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which
      lives in the wings of the fog. Perspiration started out on his
      brow. He stood quite still, listening with all his might.

      “And then,” as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the
      course of a game of billiards at the Red Pottle, “I lost him.”

      Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just
      put together a neat break of twenty-three,—failing at a “Jenny.”
      “And who was _she?_” he asked.

      George looked slowly at the “man of the world’s” fattish, sallow
      face, and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his
      cheeks and his heavy-lidded eyes.

      “No, no, my fine fellow,” he thought, “I’m not going to tell
      _you_.” For though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought
      him a bit of a cad.

      “Oh, some little love-lady or other,” he said, and chalked his
      cue.

      “A love-lady!” exclaimed Dartie—he used a more figurative
      expression. “I made sure it was our friend Soa....”

      “Did you?” said George curtly. “Then damme you’ve made an error.”

      He missed his shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject
      again till, towards eleven o’clock, having, in his poetic
      phraseology, “looked upon the drink when it was yellow,” he drew
      aside the blind, and gazed out into the street. The murky
      blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the
      “Red Pottle,” and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.

      “I can’t help thinking of that poor Buccaneer,” he said. “He may
      be wandering out there now in that fog. If he’s not a corpse,” he
      added with strange dejection.

      “Corpse!” said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at
      Richmond flared up. “_He’s_ all right. Ten to one if he wasn’t
      tight!”

      George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of
      savage gloom on his big face.

      “Dry up!” he said. “Don’t I tell you he’s ‘taken the knock!’”




      CHAPTER V THE TRIAL

      In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames
      was again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just
      as well, for he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to
      adopt towards her.

      He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide
      against the event of the first action (a breach of promise)
      collapsing, which however it did not, both sides showing a
      courage that afforded Waterbuck, Q.C., an opportunity for
      improving his already great reputation in this class of case. He
      was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of promise man.
      It was a battle of giants.

      The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval.
      The jury left the box for good, and Soames went out to get
      something to eat. He met James standing at the little
      luncheon-bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries,
      bent over a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him. The
      spacious emptiness of the great central hall, over which father
      and son brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then
      for a fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly
      bolting across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man,
      looking up in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than
      their generation, seated in an embrasure arguing. The sound of
      their voices arose, together with a scent as of neglected wells,
      which, mingling with the odour of the galleries, combined to form
      the savour, like nothing but the emanation of a refined cheese,
      so indissolubly connected with the administration of British
      Justice.

      It was not long before James addressed his son.

      “When’s your case coming on? I suppose it’ll be on directly. I
      shouldn’t wonder if this Bosinney’d say anything; I should think
      he’d have to. He’ll go bankrupt if it goes against him.” He took
      a large bite at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry. “Your
      mother,” he said, “wants you and Irene to come and dine
      to-night.”

      A chill smile played round Soames’s lips; he looked back at his
      father. Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus
      interchanged, might have been pardoned for not appreciating the
      real understanding between them. James finished his sherry at a
      draught.

      “How much?” he asked.

      On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat
      on the front bench beside his solicitor. He ascertained where his
      father was seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit nobody.

      James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his
      umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind
      counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over.
      He considered Bosinney’s conduct in every way outrageous, but he
      did not wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting
      would be awkward.

      Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite
      emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other
      commercial actions being frequently decided there. Quite a
      sprinkling of persons unconnected with the law occupied the back
      benches, and the hat of a woman or two could be seen in the
      gallery.

      The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were
      gradually filled by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make
      pencil notes, chat, and attend to their teeth; but his interest
      was soon diverted from these lesser lights of justice by the
      entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the wings of his silk gown
      rustling, and his red, capable face supported by two short, brown
      whiskers. The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely admitted, the
      very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.

      For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen
      Waterbuck, Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower
      branch of the profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good
      cross-examiner. The long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed
      somewhat after seeing him, especially as he now perceived that
      Soames alone was represented by silk.

      Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat
      with his Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared—a
      thin, rather hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven
      under his snowy wig. Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck
      rose, and remained on his feet until the judge was seated. James
      rose but slightly; he was already comfortable, and had no opinion
      of Bentham, having sat next but one to him at dinner twice at the
      Bumley Tomms’. Bumley Tomm was rather a poor thing, though he had
      been so successful. James himself had given him his first brief.
      He was excited, too, for he had just found out that Bosinney was
      not in court.

      “Now, what’s he mean by that?” he kept on thinking.

      The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his
      papers, hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a
      semi-circular look around him, like a man who is going to bat,
      arose and addressed the Court.

      The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his
      Lordship would be asked was to interpret the correspondence which
      had taken place between his client and the defendant, an
      architect, with reference to the decoration of a house. He would,
      however, submit that this correspondence could only mean one very
      plain thing. After briefly reciting the history of the house at
      Robin Hill, which he described as a mansion, and the actual facts
      of expenditure, he went on as follows:

      “My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of
      property, who would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim
      that might be made against him, but he has met with such
      treatment from his architect in the matter of this house, over
      which he has, as your lordship has heard, already spent some
      twelve—some twelve thousand pounds, a sum considerably in advance
      of the amount he had originally contemplated, that as a matter of
      principle—and this I cannot too strongly emphasize—as a matter of
      principle, and in the interests of others, he has felt himself
      compelled to bring this action. The point put forward in defence
      by the architect I will suggest to your lordship is not worthy of
      a moment’s serious consideration.” He then read the
      correspondence.

      His client, “a man of recognised position,” was prepared to go
      into the box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it
      was never in his mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money
      beyond the extreme limit of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
      which he had clearly fixed; and not further to waste the time of
      the court, he would at once call Mr. Forsyte.

      Soames then went into the box. His whole appearance was striking
      in its composure. His face, just supercilious enough, pale and
      clean-shaven, with a little line between the eyes, and compressed
      lips; his dress in unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved,
      the other bare. He answered the questions put to him in a
      somewhat low, but distinct voice. His evidence under
      cross-examination savoured of taciturnity.

      Had he not used the expression, “a free hand”? No.

      “Come, come!”

      The expression he had used was “a free hand in the terms of this
      correspondence.”

      “Would you tell the Court that that was English?”

      “Yes!”

      “What do you say it means?”

      “What it says!”

      “Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?”

      “Yes.”

      “You are not an Irishman?”

      “No.”

      “Are you a well-educated man?”

      “Yes.”

      “And yet you persist in that statement?”

      “Yes.”

      Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned
      again and again around the “nice point,” James sat with his hand
      behind his ear, his eyes fixed upon his son.

      He was proud of him! He could not but feel that in similar
      circumstances he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his
      replies, but his instinct told him that this taciturnity was the
      very thing. He sighed with relief, however, when Soames, slowly
      turning, and without any change of expression, descended from the
      box.

      When it came to the turn of Bosinney’s Counsel to address the
      Judge, James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court
      again and again to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.

      Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney’s
      absence in an awkward position. He therefore did his best to turn
      that absence to account.

      He could not but fear—he said—that his client had met with an
      accident. He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they
      had sent round that morning both to Mr. Bosinney’s office and to
      his rooms (though he knew they were one and the same, he thought
      it was as well not to say so), but it was not known where he was,
      and this he considered to be ominous, knowing how anxious Mr.
      Bosinney had been to give his evidence. He had not, however, been
      instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in default of such
      instruction he conceived it his duty to go on. The plea on which
      he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had he not
      unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending, would
      have supported by his evidence, was that such an expression as a
      “free hand” could not be limited, fettered, and rendered
      unmeaning, by any verbiage which might follow it. He would go
      further and say that the correspondence showed that whatever he
      might have said in his evidence, Mr. Forsyte had in fact never
      contemplated repudiating liability on any of the work ordered or
      executed by his architect. The defendant had certainly never
      contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated by his
      letters, he would never have proceeded with the work—a work of
      extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to
      meet and satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich
      man, a man of property. He felt strongly on this point, and
      feeling strongly he used, perhaps, rather strong words when he
      said that this action was of a most unjustifiable, unexpected,
      indeed—unprecedented character. If his Lordship had had the
      opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to take, to go
      over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and beauty
      of the decorations executed by his client—an artist in his most
      honourable profession—he felt convinced that not for one moment
      would his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word
      than daring attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.

      Taking the text of Soames’s letters, he lightly touched on
      “Boileau _v_. The Blasted Cement Company, Limited.” “It is
      doubtful,” he said, “what that authority has decided; in any case
      I would submit that it is just as much in my favour as in my
      friend’s.” He then argued the “nice point” closely. With all due
      deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte’s expression nullified
      itself. His client not being a rich man, the matter was a serious
      one for him; he was a very talented architect, whose professional
      reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake. He concluded with a
      perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as a lover of the arts,
      to show himself the protector of artists, from what was
      occasionally—he said occasionally—the too iron hand of capital.
      “What,” he said, “will be the position of the artistic
      professions, if men of property like this Mr. Forsyte refuse, and
      are allowed to refuse, to carry out the obligations of the
      commissions which they have given.” He would now call his client,
      in case he should at the last moment have found himself able to
      be present.

      The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the
      Ushers, and the sound of the calling echoed with strange
      melancholy throughout the Court and Galleries.

      The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had
      upon James a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost
      dog about the streets. And the creepy feeling that it gave him,
      of a man missing, grated on his sense of comfort and security—on
      his cosiness. Though he could not have said why, it made him feel
      uneasy.

      He looked now at the clock—a quarter to three! It would be all
      over in a quarter of an hour. Where could the young fellow be?

      It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he
      got over the turn he had received.

      Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more
      ordinary mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward. The electric
      light, just turned on above his head, fell on his face, and
      mellowed it to an orange hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig;
      the amplitude of his robes grew before the eye; his whole figure,
      facing the comparative dusk of the Court, radiated like some
      majestic and sacred body. He cleared his throat, took a sip of
      water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk, and, folding
      his bony hands before him, began.

      To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought
      Bentham would loom. It was the majesty of the law; and a person
      endowed with a nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James
      might have been excused for failing to pierce this halo, and
      disinter therefrom the somewhat ordinary Forsyte, who walked and
      talked in every-day life under the name of Sir Walter Bentham.

      He delivered judgment in the following words:

      “The facts in this case are not in dispute. On May 15 last the
      defendant wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to
      withdraw from his professional position in regard to the
      decoration of the plaintiff’s house, unless he were given ‘a free
      hand.’ The plaintiff, on May 17, wrote back as follows: ‘In
      giving you, in accordance with your request, this free hand, I
      wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of the house
      as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your fee
      (as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.’
      To this letter the defendant replied on May 18: ‘If you think
      that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to
      the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken.’ On May 19 the
      plaintiff wrote as follows: ‘I did not mean to say that if you
      should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty
      or even fifty pounds there would be any difficulty between us.
      You have a free hand in the terms of this correspondence, and I
      hope you will see your way to completing the decorations.’ On May
      20 the defendant replied thus shortly: ‘Very well.’

      “In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred
      liabilities and expenses which brought the total cost of this
      house up to the sum of twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all
      of which expenditure has been defrayed by the plaintiff. This
      action has been brought by the plaintiff to recover from the
      defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds expended by
      him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
      alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this
      correspondence as the maximum sum that the defendant had
      authority to expend.

      “The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is
      liable to refund to the plaintiff this sum. In my judgment he is
      so liable.

      “What in effect the plaintiff has said is this ‘I give you a free
      hand to complete these decorations, provided that you keep within
      a total cost to me of twelve thousand pounds. If you exceed that
      sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold you responsible;
      beyond that point you are no agent of mine, and I shall repudiate
      liability.’ It is not quite clear to me whether, had the
      plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his agent’s
      contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been
      successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course. He
      has accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against
      the defendant under the terms of the latter’s engagement.

      “In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum
      from the defendant.

      “It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no
      limit of expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this
      correspondence. If this were so, I can find no reason for the
      plaintiff’s importation into the correspondence of the figures of
      twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds. The
      defendant’s contention would render these figures meaningless. It
      is manifest to me that by his letter of May 20 he assented to a
      very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must be held to
      be bound.

      “For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for
      the amount claimed with costs.”

      James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had
      fallen with a rattle at the words “importation into this
      correspondence.”

      Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting
      for his son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey
      afternoon) and drove straight to Timothy’s where he found
      Swithin; and to him, Mrs. Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he
      recounted the whole proceedings, eating two muffins not
      altogether in the intervals of speech.

      “Soames did very well,” he ended; “he’s got his head screwed on
      the right way. This won’t please Jolyon. It’s a bad business for
      that young Bosinney; he’ll go bankrupt, I shouldn’t wonder,” and
      then after a long pause, during which he had stared disquietly
      into the fire, he added:

      “He wasn’t there—now why?”

      There was a sound of footsteps. The figure of a thick-set man,
      with the ruddy brown face of robust health, was seen in the back
      drawing-room. The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined
      against the black of his frock coat. He spoke in a grudging
      voice.

      “Well, James,” he said, “I can’t—I can’t stop,” and turning
      round, he walked out.

      It was Timothy.

      James rose from his chair. “There!” he said, “there! I knew there
      was something wro....” He checked himself, and was silent,
      staring before him, as though he had seen a portent.




      CHAPTER VI SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS

      In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home. He felt
      disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his
      triumph, he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to
      Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road.

      His father had just left; Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in
      possession of the whole story, greeted him warmly. They were sure
      he was hungry after all that evidence. Smither should toast him
      some more muffins, his dear father had eaten them all. He must
      put his legs up on the sofa; and he must have a glass of prune
      brandy too. It was so strengthening.

      Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his wont,
      for he felt in want of exercise. On hearing this suggestion, he
      “pished.” A pretty pass young men were coming to! His own liver
      was out of order, and he could not bear the thought of anyone
      else drinking prune brandy.

      He went away almost immediately, saying to Soames: “And how’s
      your wife? You tell her from me that if she’s dull, and likes to
      come and dine with me quietly, I’ll give her such a bottle of
      champagne as she doesn’t get every day.” Staring down from his
      height on Soames he contracted his thick, puffy, yellow hand as
      though squeezing within it all this small fry, and throwing out
      his chest he waddled slowly away.

      Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified. Swithin was so
      droll!

      They themselves were longing to ask Soames how Irene would take
      the result, yet knew that they must not; he would perhaps say
      something of his own accord, to throw some light on this, the
      present burning question in their lives, the question that from
      necessity of silence tortured them almost beyond bearing; for
      even Timothy had now been told, and the effect on his health was
      little short of alarming. And what, too, would June do? This,
      also, was a most exciting, if dangerous speculation!

      They had never forgotten old Jolyon’s visit, since when he had
      not once been to see them; they had never forgotten the feeling
      it gave all who were present, that the family was no longer what
      it had been—that the family was breaking up.

      But Soames gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed,
      talking of the Barbizon school of painters, whom he had just
      discovered. These were the coming men, he said; he should not
      wonder if a lot of money were made over them; he had his eye on
      two pictures by a man called Corot, charming things; if he could
      get them at a reasonable price he was going to buy them—they
      would, he thought, fetch a big price some day.

      Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small
      nor Aunt Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off.

      It was interesting—most interesting—and then Soames was so clever
      that they were sure he would do something with those pictures if
      anybody could; but what was his plan now that he had won his
      case; was he going to leave London at once, and live in the
      country, or what was he going to do?

      Soames answered that he did not know, he thought they should be
      moving soon. He rose and kissed his aunts.

      No sooner had Aunt Juley received this emblem of departure than a
      change came over her, as though she were being visited by
      dreadful courage; every little roll of flesh on her face seemed
      trying to escape from an invisible, confining mask.

      She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height, and
      said: “It has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody
      else will tell you, I have made up my mind that....”

      Aunt Hester interrupted her: “Mind, Julia, you do it....” she
      gasped—“on your own responsibility!”

      Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard: “I think you
      _ought_ to know, dear, that Mrs. MacAnder saw Irene walking in
      Richmond Park with Mr. Bosinney.”

      Aunt Hester, who had also risen, sank back in her chair, and
      turned her face away. Really Juley was too—she should not do such
      things when she—Aunt Hester, was in the room; and, breathless
      with anticipation, she waited for what Soames would answer.

      He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centred between
      his eyes; lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger,
      he bit a nail delicately; then, drawling it out between set lips,
      he said: “Mrs. MacAnder is a cat!”

      Without waiting for any reply, he left the room.

      When he went into Timothy’s he had made up his mind what course
      to pursue on getting home. He would go up to Irene and say:

      “Well, I’ve won my case, and there’s an end of it! I don’t want
      to be hard on Bosinney; I’ll see if we can’t come to some
      arrangement; he shan’t be pressed. And now let’s turn over a new
      leaf! We’ll let the house, and get out of these fogs. We’ll go
      down to Robin Hill at once. I—I never meant to be rough with you!
      Let’s shake hands—and—” Perhaps she would let him kiss her, and
      forget!

      When he came out of Timothy’s his intentions were no longer so
      simple. The smouldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed
      up within him. He would put an end to that sort of thing once and
      for all; he would not have her drag his name in the dirt! If she
      could not or would not love him, as was her duty and his
      right—she should not play him tricks with anyone else! He would
      tax her with it; threaten to divorce her! That would make her
      behave; she would never face that. But—but—what if she did? He
      was staggered; this had not occurred to him.

      What if she did? What if she made him a confession? How would he
      stand then? He would have to bring a divorce!

      A divorce! Thus close, the word was paralyzing, so utterly at
      variance with all the principles that had hitherto guided his
      life. Its lack of compromise appalled him; he felt—like the
      captain of a ship, going to the side of his vessel, and, with his
      own hands throwing over the most precious of his bales. This
      jettisoning of his property with his own hand seemed uncanny to
      Soames. It would injure him in his profession: He would have to
      get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent so much
      money, so much anticipation—and at a sacrifice. And she! She
      would no longer belong to him, not even in name! She would pass
      out of his life, and he—he should never see her again!

      He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting
      beyond the thought that he should never see her again!

      But perhaps there was nothing to confess, even now very likely
      there was nothing to confess. Was it wise to push things so far?
      Was it wise to put himself into a position where he might have to
      eat his words? The result of this case would ruin Bosinney; a
      ruined man was desperate, but—what could he do? He might go
      abroad, ruined men always went abroad. What could _they_ do—if
      indeed it _was_ “_they_”—without money? It would be better to
      wait and see how things turned out. If necessary, he could have
      her watched. The agony of his jealousy (for all the world like
      the crisis of an aching tooth) came on again; and he almost cried
      out. But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he
      got home. When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided
      nothing.

      He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to
      meet her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or
      do.

      The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question:
      “Where is your mistress?” told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the
      house about noon, taking with her a trunk and bag.

      Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he
      confronted her:

      “What?” he exclaimed; “what’s that you said?” Suddenly
      recollecting that he must not betray emotion, he added: “What
      message did she leave?” and noticed with secret terror the
      startled look of the maid’s eyes.

      “Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir.”

      “No message; very well, thank you, that will do. I shall be
      dining out.”

      The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly
      turning over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood
      on the carved oak rug chest in the hall.

      Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher.
      Mrs. Septimus Small.
      Mrs. Baynes.
      Mr. Solomon Thornworthy.
      Lady Bellis.
      Miss Hermione Bellis.
      Miss Winifred Bellis.
      Miss Ella Bellis.

      Who the devil were all these people? He seemed to have forgotten
      all familiar things. The words “no message—a trunk, and a bag,”
      played a hide-and-seek in his brain. It was incredible that she
      had left no message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs
      two steps at a time, as a young married man when he comes home
      will run up to his wife’s room.

      Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet-smelling; everything in
      perfect order. On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt, was
      the bag she had made and embroidered with her own hands to hold
      her sleeping things; her slippers ready at the foot; the sheets
      even turned over at the head as though expecting her.

      On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from
      her dressing bag, his own present. There must, then, be some
      mistake. What bag had she taken? He went to the bell to summon
      Bilson, but remembered in time that he must assume knowledge of
      where Irene had gone, take it all as a matter of course, and
      grope out the meaning for himself.

      He locked the doors, and tried to think, but felt his brain going
      round; and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes.

      Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the
      mirror.

      He was too pale, a greyish tinge all over his face; he poured out
      water, and began feverishly washing.

      Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion
      she used for her hair; and at this scent the burning sickness of
      his jealousy seized him again.

      Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the
      street.

      He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went
      down Sloane Street he framed a story for use, in case he should
      not find her at Bosinney’s. But if he should? His power of
      decision again failed; he reached the house without knowing what
      he should do if he did find her there.

      It was after office hours, and the street door was closed; the
      woman who opened it could not say whether Mr. Bosinney were in or
      no; she had not seen him that day, not for two or three days; she
      did not attend to him now, nobody attended to him, he....

      Soames interrupted her, he would go up and see for himself. He
      went up with a dogged, white face.

      The top floor was unlighted, the door closed, no one answered his
      ringing, he could hear no sound. He was obliged to descend,
      shivering under his fur, a chill at his heart. Hailing a cab, he
      told the man to drive to Park Lane.

      On the way he tried to recollect when he had last given her a
      cheque; she could not have more than three or four pounds, but
      there were her jewels; and with exquisite torture he remembered
      how much money she could raise on these; enough to take them
      abroad; enough for them to live on for months! He tried to
      calculate; the cab stopped, and he got out with the calculation
      unmade.

      The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master
      had told him they were both expected to dinner.

      Soames answered: “No. Mrs. Forsyte has a cold.”

      The butler was sorry.

      Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and
      remembering that he was not in dress clothes, asked: “Anybody
      here to dinner, Warmson?”

      “Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir.”

      Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously
      at him. His composure gave way.

      “What are you looking at?” he said. “What’s the matter with me,
      eh?”

      The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that
      sounded like: “Nothing, sir, I’m sure, sir,” and stealthily
      withdrew.

      Soames walked upstairs. Passing the drawing-room without a look,
      he went straight up to his mother’s and father’s bedroom.

      James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean
      figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening
      waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew
      from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering
      with intense concentration, his lips pouting, was hooking the top
      hooks of his wife’s bodice. Soames stopped; he felt half-choked,
      whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or for some other
      reason. He—he himself had never—never been asked to....

      He heard his father’s voice, as though there were a pin in his
      mouth, saying: “Who’s that? Who’s there? What d’you want?” His
      mother’s: “Here, Félice, come and hook this; your master’ll never
      get done.”

      He put his hand up to his throat, and said hoarsely:

      “It’s I—Soames!”

      He noticed gratefully the affectionate surprise in Emily’s:
      “Well, my dear boy?” and James’, as he dropped the hook: “What,
      Soames! What’s brought you up? Aren’t you well?”

      He answered mechanically: “I’m all right,” and looked at them,
      and it seemed impossible to bring out his news.

      James, quick to take alarm, began: “You don’t look well. I expect
      you’ve taken a chill—it’s liver, I shouldn’t wonder. Your
      mother’ll give you....”

      But Emily broke in quietly: “Have you brought Irene?”

      Soames shook his head.

      “No,” he stammered, “she—she’s left me!”

      Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing. Her
      tall, full figure lost its majesty and became very human as she
      came running over to Soames.

      “My dear boy! My _dear_ boy!”

      She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.

      James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked
      older.

      “Left you?” he said. “What d’you mean—left you? You never told me
      she was going to leave you.”

      Soames answered surlily: “How could I tell? What’s to be done?”

      James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like
      without a coat. “What’s to be done!” he muttered. “How should I
      know what’s to be done? What’s the good of asking me? Nobody
      tells me anything, and then they come and ask me what’s to be
      done; and I should like to know how I’m to tell them! Here’s your
      mother, there she stands; _she_ doesn’t say anything. What _I_
      should say you’ve got to do is to follow her..”

      Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before
      looked pitiable.

      “I don’t know where she’s gone,” he said.

      “Don’t know where she’s gone!” said James. “How d’you mean, don’t
      know where she’s gone? Where d’you suppose she’s gone? She’s gone
      after that young Bosinney, that’s where she’s gone. I knew how it
      would be.”

      Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother
      pressing his hand. And all that passed seemed to pass as though
      his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.

      His father’s face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to
      cry, and words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some
      spasm in his soul.

      “There’ll be a scandal; I always said so.” Then, no one saying
      anything: “And there you stand, you and your mother!”

      And Emily’s voice, calm, rather contemptuous: “Come, now, James!
      Soames will do all that he can.”

      And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: “Well, I
      can’t help you; I’m getting old. Don’t you be in too great a
      hurry, my boy.”

      And his mother’s voice again: “Soames will do all he can to get
      her back. We won’t talk of it. It’ll all come right, I dare say.”

      And James: “Well, I can’t see how it can come right. And if she
      hasn’t gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not
      to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back.”

      Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of
      her approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath,
      he muttered between his teeth: “I will!”

      All three went down to the drawing-room together. There, were
      gathered the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the
      family circle would have been complete.

      James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold
      greeting to Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man
      likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner
      was announced. Soames, too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of
      cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial
      subjects. She was never more composed in her manner and
      conversation than that evening.

      A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene’s flight, no
      view was expressed by any other member of the family as to the
      right course to be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the
      general tone adopted in relation to events as they afterwards
      turned out, that James’s advice: “Don’t you listen to her, follow
      her and get her back!” would, with here and there an exception,
      have been regarded as sound, not only in Park Lane, but amongst
      the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy’s. Just as it would
      surely have been endorsed by that wider body of Forsytes all over
      London, who were merely excluded from judgment by ignorance of
      the story.

      In spite then of Emily’s efforts, the dinner was served by
      Warmson and the footman almost in silence. Dartie was sulky, and
      drank all he could get; the girls seldom talked to each other at
      any time. James asked once where June was, and what she was doing
      with herself in these days. No one could tell him. He sank back
      into gloom. Only when Winifred recounted how little Publius had
      given his bad penny to a beggar, did he brighten up.

      “Ah!” he said, “that’s a clever little chap. I don’t know what’ll
      become of him, if he goes on like this. An intelligent little
      chap, I call him!” But it was only a flash.

      The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric
      light, which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the
      principal ornament of the walls, a so-called “Sea Piece by
      Turner,” almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men.

      Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James’ prehistoric
      port, but as by the chill hand of some skeleton.

      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 Jun’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 Jun’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 Jun’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 Jun’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—she 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 Jun’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
      Jun’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 morning 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 Jun’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 wash 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 in 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 Forsyte Saga, The Man Of Property, by John Galsworthy

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORSYTE SAGA, THE MAN OF PROPERTY ***

***** This file should be named 2559-0.txt or 2559-0.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/5/2559/

Produced by David Widger

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
1.E.8.

1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country outside the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
  most other parts of the world 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.org. If you are not located in the
  United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
  are located before using this ebook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
provided that

* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
  Literary Archive Foundation."

* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
  works.

* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
  receipt of the work.

* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org



Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

For additional contact information:

    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
    Chief Executive and Director
    gbnewby@pglaf.org

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.