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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Summer of a Forsyte, and In Chancery
+by John Galsworthy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Indian Summer of a Forsyte, and In Chancery
+       The Forstye Saga, Part 2
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: September 23, 2004 [EBook #2594]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE, ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger. Proofing of a previous edition by Fredrik
+Hausmann
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FORSYTE SAGA
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+VOLUME II
+
+Contents:
+     Indian Summer of a Forsyte
+     In Chancery
+
+TO ANDRE CHEVRILLON
+
+
+
+INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE
+
+      "And Summer's lease hath all
+                too short a date."
+                     --Shakespeare
+I
+
+In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of the
+evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of
+his house at Robin Hill.  He was waiting for the midges to bite him,
+before abandoning the glory of the afternoon.  His thin brown hand, where
+blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering,
+long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail had survived with him from
+those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of
+the fingers, had been so distinguished.  His domed forehead, great white
+moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering
+sunshine by an old brown Panama hat.  His legs were crossed; in all his
+attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every
+morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief.  At his feet lay a
+woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar
+between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment
+with the years.  Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was
+seated one of Holly's dolls--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen
+over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat.  She was
+never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat.  Below
+the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,
+beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the coppice,
+and the prospect--'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin Forsyte, from
+under this very tree, had stared five years ago when he drove down with
+Irene to look at the house.  Old Jolyon had heard of his brother's
+exploit--that drive which had become quite celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.
+Swithin!  And the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of
+only seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for
+ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away.  Died! and left
+only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester,
+Susan!  And old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except
+when I get that pain.'
+
+His memory went searching.  He had not felt his age since he had bought
+his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin
+Hill over three years ago.  It was as if he had been getting younger
+every spring, living in the country with his son and his
+grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly
+and Holly; living down here out of the racket of London and the cackle of
+Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a delicious atmosphere of no
+work and all play, with plenty of occupation in the perfecting and
+mellowing of the house and its twenty acres, and in ministering to the
+whims of Holly and Jolly. All the knots and crankiness, which had
+gathered in his heart during that long and tragic business of June,
+Soames, Irene his wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.
+Even June had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in
+Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother.  Curiously
+perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank, because
+his son was not there.  Jo was never anything but a comfort and a
+pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women, somehow--even the
+best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of course one admired them.
+
+Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree
+in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the
+last mowing! The wind had got into the sou' west, too--a delicious air,
+sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek.
+Somehow, to-day, he wanted company--wanted a pretty face to look at.
+People treated the old as if they wanted nothing.  And with the
+un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought:
+'One's never had enough. With a foot in the grave one'll want something,
+I shouldn't be surprised!'  Down here--away from the exigencies of
+affairs--his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little
+domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
+sesame,' to him day and night.  And sesame had opened--how much, perhaps,
+he did not know.  He had always been responsive to what they had begun to
+call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had
+never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view,
+however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him
+ache, he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening
+days, with Holly's hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking
+studiously for what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses
+open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and
+saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and
+glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to
+the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud,
+flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he
+ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down,
+that he had not very much longer to enjoy it.  The thought that some
+day--perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five--all this world would
+be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it,
+seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon.
+If anything came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not
+Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of
+those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had increased; the
+orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out
+of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before
+three things alone--beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property;
+and the greatest of these now was beauty.  He had always had wide
+interests, and, indeed could still read The Times, but he was liable at
+any moment to put it down if he heard a blackbird sing.  Upright conduct,
+property--somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets
+never tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get
+enough of them.  Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening
+and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to
+him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,' which he had recently
+heard at Covent Garden.  A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even
+quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something
+classical and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the
+Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old days'--highest praise he could bestow.
+The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going
+down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang
+and throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering
+beauty of the world that evening.  And with the tip of his cork-soled,
+elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog
+Balthasar, causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he
+was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact.  When
+he had finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his
+master's calf, and settled down again with his chin over the instep of
+the disturbing boot.  And into old Jolyon's mind came a sudden
+recollection--a face he had seen at that opera three weeks ago--Irene,
+the wife of his precious nephew Soames, that man of property! Though he
+had not met her since the day of  the 'At Home' in his old house at
+Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred
+engagement to young Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had
+always admired her--a very pretty creature.  After the death of young
+Bosinney, whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard
+that she had left Soames at once.  Goodness only knew what she had been
+doing since.  That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in front,
+had been literally the only reminder these three years that she was still
+alive.  No one ever spoke of her.  And yet Jo had told him something
+once--something which had upset him completely. The boy had got it from
+George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he
+was run over--something which explained the young fellow's distress--an
+act of Soames towards his wife--a shocking act.  Jo had seen her, too,
+that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his
+description had always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he
+had called her.  And next day June had gone there--bottled up her
+feelings and gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her
+mistress had slipped out in the night and vanished.  A tragic business
+altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to lay
+hands on her again.  And he was living at Brighton, and journeying up and
+down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For when he once took a
+dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old Jolyon never got over it.
+He remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the news
+of Irene's disappearance.  It had been shocking to think of her a
+prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered back, when Jo saw
+her, wandered back for a moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after
+seeing that news, 'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street.  Her
+face had struck him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had
+remembered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it.  A young
+woman still--twenty-eight perhaps.  Ah, well! Very likely she had another
+lover by now.  But at this subversive thought--for married women should
+never love: once, even, had been too much--his instep rose, and with it
+the dog Balthasar's head.  The sagacious animal stood up and looked into
+old Jolyon's face.  'Walk?' he seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered:
+"Come on, old chap!"
+
+Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of
+buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery.  This feature, where
+very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below the level of
+the lawn so that it might come up again on the level of the other lawn
+and give the impression of irregularity, so important in horticulture.
+Its rocks and earth were beloved of the dog Balthasar, who sometimes
+found a mole there.  Old Jolyon made a point of passing through it
+because, though it was not beautiful, he intended that it should be, some
+day, and he would think: 'I must get Varr to come down and look at it;
+he's better than Beech.' For plants, like houses and human complaints,
+required the best expert consideration.  It was inhabited by snails, and
+if accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell them
+the story of the little boy who said: 'Have plummers got leggers, Mother?
+'No, sonny.'  'Then darned if I haven't been and swallowed a snileybob.'
+And when they skipped and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob
+going down the little boy's 'red lane,' his eyes would twinkle.  Emerging
+from the fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into
+the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick
+walls, the vegetable garden had been carved.  Old Jolyon avoided this,
+which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.
+Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait
+which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at
+the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since
+yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when 'his little sweet'
+had got over the upset which had followed on her eating a tomato at
+lunch--her little arrangements were very delicate.  Now that Jolly had
+gone to school--his first term--Holly was with him nearly all day long,
+and he missed her badly.  He felt that pain too, which often bothered him
+now, a little dragging at his left side.  He looked back up the hill.
+Really, poor young Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house;
+he would have done very well for himself if he had lived!  And where was
+he now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of his
+tragic love affair.  Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused in the
+general?  Who could say?  That dog was getting his legs muddy!  And he
+moved towards the coppice.  There had been the most delightful lot of
+bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little patches of
+sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun.  He passed the
+cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and pursued a path into
+the thick of the saplings, making for one of the bluebell plots.
+Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a low growl.  Old Jolyon
+stirred him with his foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where
+there was no room to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of
+his woolly back.  Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's
+stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old
+Jolyon also felt something move along his spine.  And then the path
+turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting. Her
+face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
+trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned. Powers
+above!  The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he had just
+been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things blurred, as if a
+spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight perhaps on her violet-grey
+frock! And then she rose and stood smiling, her head a little to one
+side.  Old Jolyon thought: 'How pretty she is!' She did not speak,
+neither did he; and he realized why with a certain admiration.  She was
+here no doubt because of some memory, and did not mean to try and get out
+of it by vulgar explanation.
+
+"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet. Come
+here, you!"
+
+But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand down
+and stroked his head.  Old Jolyon said quickly:
+
+"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."
+
+"Oh, yes! I did."
+
+He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you think
+one could miss seeing you?'
+
+"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly.  "I'm alone; I drove up for
+the opera.  The Ravogli's good.  Have you seen the cow-houses?"
+
+In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like emotion he
+moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and she moved beside
+him.  Her figure swayed faintly, like the best kind of French figures;
+her dress, too, was a sort of French grey. He noticed two or three silver
+threads in her amber-coloured hair, strange hair with those dark eyes of
+hers, and that creamy-pale face.  A sudden sidelong look from the velvety
+brown eyes disturbed him.  It seemed to come from deep and far, from
+another world almost, or at all events from some one not living very much
+in this.  And he said mechanically:
+
+"Where are you living now?"
+
+"I have a little flat in Chelsea."
+
+He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
+anything; but the perverse word came out:
+
+"Alone?"
+
+She nodded.  It was a relief to know that.  And it came into his mind
+that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of this
+coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.
+
+"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk.  This one's a
+pretty creature.  Woa, Myrtle!"
+
+The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own, was
+standing absolutely still, not having long been milked.  She looked round
+at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild, cynical eyes, and from
+her grey lips a little dribble of saliva threaded its way towards the
+straw.  The scent of hay and vanilla and ammonia rose in the dim light of
+the cool cow-house; and old Jolyon said:
+
+"You must come up and have some dinner with me.  I'll send you home in
+the carriage."
+
+He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt, with her
+memories.  But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a charming figure,
+beauty!  He had been alone all the afternoon. Perhaps his eyes were
+wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle Jolyon.  I should like to."
+
+He rubbed his hands, and said:
+
+"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they
+ascended through the field.  The sun was almost level in their faces now,
+and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just
+deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness--the special
+look of life unshared with others.  "I'll take her in by the terrace," he
+thought: "I won't make a common visitor of her."
+
+"What do you do all day?" he said.
+
+"Teach music; I have another interest, too."
+
+"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing, and
+smoothing its black petticoat.  "Nothing like it, is there?  I don't do
+any now.  I'm getting on.  What interest is that?"
+
+"Trying to help women who've come to grief."  Old Jolyon did not quite
+understand.  "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a shock that she
+meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he had used that
+expression.  Assisting the Magdalenes of London! What a weird and
+terrifying interest!  And, curiosity overcoming his natural shrinking, he
+asked:
+
+"Why? What do you do for them?"
+
+"Not much.  I've no money to spare.  I can only give sympathy and food
+sometimes."
+
+Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse.  He said hastily: "How
+d'you get hold of them?"
+
+"I go to a hospital."
+
+"A hospital! Phew!"
+
+"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
+beauty."
+
+Old Jolyon straightened the doll.  "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha! Yes! A
+sad business!" and he moved towards the house.  Through a French window,
+under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her into the room where he
+was wont to study The Times and the sheets of an agricultural magazine,
+with huge illustrations of mangold wurzels, and the like, which provided
+Holly with material for her paint brush.
+
+"Dinner's in half an hour.  You'd like to wash your hands!  I'll take you
+to June's room."
+
+He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last visited
+this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps--he did not
+know, could not say!  All that was dark, and he wished to leave it so.
+But what changes!  And in the hall he said:
+
+"My boy Jo's a painter, you know.  He's got a lot of taste.  It isn't
+mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."
+
+She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and music
+room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great skylight.  Old
+Jolyon had an odd impression of her.  Was she trying to conjure somebody
+from the shades of that space where the colouring was all pearl-grey and
+silver? He would have had gold himself; more lively and solid.  But Jo
+had French tastes, and it had come out shadowy like that, with an effect
+as of the fume of cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and
+there by a little blaze of blue or crimson colour.  It was not his dream!
+Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces of
+still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity was
+precious.  And now where were they?  Sold for a song!  That something
+which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times had warned him
+against the struggle to retain them.  But in his study he still had
+'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'
+
+He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his side.
+
+"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements.  I've had
+them tiled.  The nurseries are along there.  And this is Jo's and his
+wife's.  They all communicate.  But you remember, I expect."
+
+Irene nodded.  They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large room
+with a small bed, and several windows.
+
+"This is mine," he said.  The walls were covered with the photographs of
+children and watercolour sketches, and he added doubtfully:
+
+"These are Jo's.  The view's first-rate.  You can see the Grand Stand at
+Epsom in clear weather."
+
+The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a
+luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous day.  Few
+houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened, away to a loom of
+downs.
+
+"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be when
+we're all gone.  Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet here in the
+mornings.  I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."
+
+Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its mournful
+look.  'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought.  'A pretty face,
+but sad!'  And taking up his can of hot water he went out into the
+gallery.
+
+"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting the can
+down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the door behind her
+he went back to his own room.  Brushing his hair with his great ebony
+brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de Cologne, he mused.  She had
+come so strangely--a sort of visitation; mysterious, even romantic, as if
+his desire for company, for beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was
+which fulfilled that sort of thing.  And before the mirror he
+straightened his still upright figure, passed the brushes over his great
+white moustache, touched up his eyebrows with eau de Cologne, and rang
+the bell.
+
+"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me. Let cook
+do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and pair at
+half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night.  Is Miss Holly asleep?"
+
+The maid thought not.  And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery, stole on
+tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose hinges he kept
+specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the evenings without
+being heard.
+
+But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that type
+which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they had completed
+her.  Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on her face was perfect
+peace--her little arrangements were evidently all right again.  And old
+Jolyon, in the twilight of the room, stood adoring her!  It was so
+charming, solemn, and loving--that little face.  He had more than his
+share of the blessed capacity of living again in the young.  They were to
+him his future life--all of a future life that his fundamental pagan
+sanity perhaps admitted.  There she was with everything before her, and
+his blood--some of it--in her tiny veins.  There she was, his little
+companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that she
+knew nothing but love.  His heart swelled, and he went out, stilling the
+sound of his patent-leather boots.  In the corridor an eccentric notion
+attacked him: To think that children should come to that which Irene had
+told him she was helping!  Women who were all, once, little things like
+this one sleeping there!  'I must give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't
+bear to think of them!'  They had never borne reflecting on, those poor
+outcasts; wounding too deeply the core of true refinement hidden under
+layers of conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously
+the deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even
+now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society of a
+pretty woman.  And he went downstairs, through the swinging doors, to the
+back regions.  There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock worth at least two
+pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better than any Johannisberg that
+ever went down throat; a wine of perfect bouquet, sweet as a
+nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a bottle out, handling it like a baby,
+and holding it level to the light, to look.  Enshrined in its coat of
+dust, that mellow coloured, slender-necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.
+Three years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to be in
+prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God he had
+kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it.  She would appreciate
+this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen.  He wiped the bottle, drew the
+cork with his own hands, put his nose down, inhaled its perfume, and went
+back to the music room.
+
+Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a lace
+scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was visible,
+and the pallor of her neck.  In her grey frock she made a pretty picture
+for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.
+
+He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went.  The room, which had been
+designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held now but a
+little round table.  In his present solitude the big dining-table
+oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed till his son came
+back.  Here in the company of two really good copies of Raphael Madonnas
+he was wont to dine alone.  It was the only disconsolate hour of his day,
+this summer weather.  He had never been a large eater, like that great
+chap Swithin, or Sylvanus Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies
+of past times; and to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him
+but a sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might
+come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar.  But this
+evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her across the
+little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland, telling her stories
+of his travels there, and other experiences which he could no longer
+recount to his son and grand-daughter because they knew them.  This fresh
+audience was precious to him; he had never become one of those old men
+who ramble round and round the fields of reminiscence.  Himself quickly
+fatigued by the insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others,
+and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in
+his relations with a woman.  He would have liked to draw her out, but
+though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he told
+her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which
+constituted half her fascination.  He could not bear women who threw
+their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-mouthed
+women who laid down the law and knew more than you did. There was only
+one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm; and the quieter it
+was, the more he liked it.  And this one had charm, shadowy as afternoon
+sunlight on those Italian hills and valleys he had loved.  The feeling,
+too, that she was, as it were, apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to
+himself, a strangely desirable companion.  When a man is very old and
+quite out of the running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of
+youth, for he would still be first in the heart of beauty.  And he drank
+his hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young.  But the dog
+Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the
+interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish glasses
+full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.
+
+The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room. And,
+cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:
+
+"Play me some Chopin."
+
+By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the
+texture of men's souls.  Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or
+Wagner's music.  He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck, and
+Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer; but of
+late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he had
+succumbed to Botticelli.  In yielding to these tastes he had been
+conscious of divergence from the standard of the Golden Age.  Their
+poetry was not that of Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and
+Titian; Mozart and Beethoven.  It was, as it were, behind a veil; their
+poetry hit no one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and
+turned and twisted, and melted up the heart.  And, never certain that
+this was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the
+pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.
+
+Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
+pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see her,
+crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar.  She sat a few moments
+with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind for what to give
+him.  Then she began and within old Jolyon there arose a sorrowful
+pleasure, not quite like anything else in the world.  He fell slowly into
+a trance, interrupted only by the movements of taking the cigar out of
+his mouth at long intervals, and replacing it.  She was there, and the
+hock within him, and the scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of
+sunshine lingering into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and
+bluish trees above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of
+lavender where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy,
+with dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and
+through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a cow's
+horn.  He opened his eyes.  Beautiful piece; she played well--the touch
+of an angel!  And he closed them again.  He felt miraculously sad and
+happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in full honey flower.  Not
+live one's own life again, but just stand there and bask in the smile of
+a woman's eyes, and enjoy the bouquet!  And he jerked his hand; the dog
+Balthasar had reached up and licked it.
+
+"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"
+
+She began to play again.  This time the resemblance between her and
+'Chopin' struck him.  The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in her
+playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft darkness of her
+eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a golden moon.
+Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in that music.  A long
+blue spiral from his cigar ascended and dispersed.  'So we go out!' he
+thought.  'No more beauty! Nothing?'
+
+Again Irene stopped.
+
+"Would you like some Gluck?  He used to write his music in a sunlit
+garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."
+
+"Ah! yes.  Let's have 'Orfeo.'"  Round about him now were fields of gold
+and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight, bright birds
+flying to and fro.  All was summer.  Lingering waves of sweetness and
+regret flooded his soul.  Some cigar ash dropped, and taking out a silk
+handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a mingled scent as of snuff and
+eau de Cologne.  'Ah!' he thought, 'Indian summer--that's all!' and he
+said: "You haven't played me 'Che faro.'"
+
+She did not answer; did not move.  He was conscious of something--some
+strange upset.  Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a pang of
+remorse shot through him.  What a clumsy chap!  Like Orpheus, she of
+course--she too was looking for her lost one in the hall of memory!  And
+disturbed to the heart, he got up from his chair.  She had gone to the
+great window at the far end.  Gingerly he followed.  Her hands were
+folded over her breast; he could just see her cheek, very white.  And,
+quite emotionalized, he said:
+
+"There, there, my love!"  The words had escaped him mechanically, for
+they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their effect
+was instantaneously distressing.  She raised her arms, covered her face
+with them, and wept.
+
+Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age.  The
+passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike the
+control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had never before
+broken down in the presence of another being.
+
+"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out
+reverently, touched her.  She turned, and leaned the arms which covered
+her face against him.  Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping one thin hand
+on her shoulder.  Let her cry her heart out--it would do her good.
+
+And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine them.
+
+The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the last of
+daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the lamp within;
+there was a scent of new-mown grass.  With the wisdom of a long life old
+Jolyon did not speak.  Even grief sobbed itself out in time; only Time
+was good for sorrow--Time who saw the passing of each mood, each emotion
+in turn; Time the layer-to-rest. There came into his mind the words: 'As
+panteth the hart after cooling streams'--but they were of no use to him.
+Then, conscious of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her eyes.
+He put his chin forward, pressed his moustache against her forehead, and
+felt her shake with a quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which
+shakes itself free of raindrops.  She put his hand to her lips, as if
+saying: "All over now!  Forgive me!"
+
+The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to where she
+had been so upset.  And the dog Balthasar, following, laid the bone of
+one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.
+
+Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of
+nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet to
+cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and Chelsea,
+turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands, whose skin,
+faintly freckled, had such an aged look.
+
+"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds. It's
+very old.  That dog leaves his bones all over the place.  This old
+'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the Marquis,
+came to grief.  But you don't remember.  Here's a nice piece of Chelsea.
+Now, what would you say this was?"  And he was comforted, feeling that,
+with her taste, she was taking a real interest in these things; for,
+after all, nothing better composes the nerves than a doubtful piece of
+china.
+
+When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said:
+
+"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you these
+by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing. This dog
+seems to have taken a fancy to you."
+
+For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his side
+against her leg.  Going out under the porch with her, he said:
+
+"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter.  Take this for your
+protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand. He
+saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh! Uncle Jolyon!" and a
+real throb of pleasure went through him.  That meant one or two poor
+creatures helped a little, and it meant that she would come again.  He
+put his hand in at the window and grasped hers once more.  The carriage
+rolled away.  He stood looking at the moon and the shadows of the trees,
+and thought: 'A sweet night! She......!'
+
+
+II
+
+Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny.  Old Jolyon walked
+and talked with Holly.  At first he felt taller and full of a new vigour;
+then he felt restless.  Almost every afternoon they would enter the
+coppice, and walk as far as the log.  'Well, she's not there!' he would
+think, 'of course not!'  And he would feel a little shorter, and drag his
+feet walking up the hill home, with his hand clapped to his left side.
+Now and then the thought would move in him: 'Did she come--or did I dream
+it?' and he would stare at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him.
+Of course she would not come again!  He opened the letters from Spain
+with less excitement.  They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
+that he could bear it.  Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes and
+looked at where she had sat.  She was not there, so he unscrewed his eyes
+again.
+
+On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some boots.'
+He ordered Beacon, and set out.  Passing from Putney towards Hyde Park he
+reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and see her.'  And he called
+out: "Just drive me to where you took that lady the other night."  The
+coachman turned his broad red face, and his juicy lips answered: "The
+lady in grey, sir?"
+
+"Yes, the lady in grey."  What other ladies were there!  Stodgy chap!
+
+The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
+standing a little back from the river.  With a practised eye old Jolyon
+saw that they were cheap.  'I should think about sixty pound a year,'  he
+mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board.  The name 'Forsyte' was
+not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C' were the words: 'Mrs. Irene
+Heron.'  Ah! She had taken her maiden name again!  And somehow this
+pleased him.  He went upstairs slowly, feeling his side a little.  He
+stood a moment, before ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and
+fluttering there.  She would not be in!  And then--Boots!  The thought
+was black.  What did he want with boots at his age? He could not wear out
+all those he had.
+
+"Your mistress at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
+
+"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"
+
+Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one would
+say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were drawn.  It
+held a cottage piano and little else save a vague fragrance and good
+taste.  He stood in the middle, with his top hat in his hand, and
+thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!' There was a mirror above the
+fireplace, and he saw himself reflected.  An old-looking chap!  He heard
+a rustle, and turned round.  She was so close that his moustache almost
+brushed her forehead, just under her hair.
+
+"I was driving up," he said.  "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask you
+how you got up the other night."
+
+And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved.  She was really glad to
+see him, perhaps.
+
+"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the Park?"
+
+But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned.  The Park! James
+and Emily!  Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his precious family
+would be there very likely, prancing up and down. And they would go and
+wag their tongues about having seen him with her, afterwards.  Better
+not!  He did not wish to revive the echoes of the past on Forsyte
+'Change.  He removed a white hair from the lapel of his
+closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand over his cheeks,
+moustache, and square chin.  It felt very hollow there under the
+cheekbones.  He had not been eating much lately--he had better get that
+little whippersnapper who attended Holly to give him a tonic.  But she
+had come back and when they were in the carriage, he said:
+
+"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added with a
+twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been in the
+secret of his thoughts.
+
+Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and strolled
+towards the water.
+
+"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not sorry."
+
+She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"
+
+"And have you?"
+
+"I?  I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay."  And
+perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the beautiful.
+
+She drew a deep breath.  "I never regretted--I couldn't.  Did you ever
+love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him.  Had he?  He did
+not seem to remember that he ever had.  But he did not like to say this
+to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose life was
+suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.  And he thought: 'If I
+had met you when I was young I--I might have made a fool of myself,
+perhaps.'  And a longing to escape in generalities beset him.
+
+"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often.  It was the
+Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I dare
+say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."
+
+"Phil adored them."
+
+Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all round
+a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like this.  She
+wanted to talk about her lover!  Well!  If it was any pleasure to her!
+And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor in him, I fancy."
+
+"Yes.  He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted way the
+Greeks gave themselves to art."
+
+Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
+symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes of
+his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?
+
+"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon."
+
+Old Jolyon looked round at her.  Was she chaffing him?  No, her eyes were
+soft as velvet.  Was she flattering him?  But if so, why? There was
+nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.
+
+"Phil thought so.  He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I
+admire him.'"
+
+Ah! There it was again.  Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him! And
+he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half grateful, as
+if he recognised what a link they were between herself and him.
+
+"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured.  "It's hot; I feel
+the heat nowadays.  Let's sit down."
+
+They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves covered
+them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon.  A pleasure to sit there
+and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him. And the wish to
+increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:
+
+"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw.  He'd be at his best
+with you.  His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had stiffed
+the word 'fangled.'
+
+"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty."  Old Jolyon
+thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle: "Well, I have,
+or I shouldn't be sitting here with you."  She was fascinating when she
+smiled with her eyes, like that!
+
+"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old.  Phil had
+real insight."
+
+He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of a
+longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was precious to
+hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which--quite true!--had
+never grown old.  Was that because--unlike her and her dead lover, he had
+never loved to desperation, had always kept his balance, his sense of
+symmetry.  Well! It had left him power, at eighty-four, to admire beauty.
+And he thought, 'If I were a painter or a sculptor!  But I'm an old chap.
+Make hay while the sun shines.'
+
+A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at the edge
+of the shadow from their tree.  The sunlight fell cruelly on their pale,
+squashed, unkempt young faces.  "We're an ugly lot!" said old Jolyon
+suddenly.  "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs over that."
+
+"Love triumphs over everything!"
+
+"The young think so," he muttered.
+
+"Love has no age, no limit, and no death."
+
+With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so large
+and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life!  But this
+extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he said: "Well, if
+it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George! it's got a lot to put
+up with."
+
+Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff.  The great
+clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got a rush of
+blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had been.
+
+She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she murmured:
+
+"It's strange enough that I'm alive."
+
+Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.
+
+"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."
+
+"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a second it
+was--Phil."
+
+Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble.  She put her hand over them, took it
+away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the Embankment; a
+woman caught me by the dress.  She told me about herself.  When one knows
+that others suffer, one's ashamed."
+
+"One of those?"
+
+She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one who
+has never known a struggle with desperation.  Almost against his will he
+muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"
+
+"I didn't care whether I lived or died.  When you're like that, Fate
+ceases to want to kill you.  She took care of me three days--she never
+left me.  I had no money.  That's why I do what I can for them, now."
+
+But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!'  What fate could compare with
+that?  Every other was involved in it.
+
+"I wish you had come to me," he said.  "Why didn't you?"  But Irene did
+not answer.
+
+"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose?  Or was it June who kept you
+away?  How are you getting on now?"  His eyes involuntarily swept her
+body.  Perhaps even now she was--!  And yet she wasn't thin--not really!
+
+"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough."  The answer did
+not reassure him; he had lost confidence.  And that fellow Soames!  But
+his sense of justice stifled condemnation.  No, she would certainly have
+died rather than take another penny from him. Soft as she looked, there
+must be strength in her somewhere--strength and fidelity.  But what
+business had young Bosinney to have got run over and left her stranded
+like this!
+
+"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want, or I
+shall be quite cut up."  And putting on his hat, he rose. "Let's go and
+get some tea.  I told that lazy chap to put the horses up for an hour,
+and come for me at your place.  We'll take a cab presently; I can't walk
+as I used to."
+
+He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the sound of
+her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of a charming form
+moving beside him.  He enjoyed their tea at Ruffel's in the High Street,
+and came out thence with a great box of chocolates swung on his little
+finger.  He enjoyed the drive back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his
+cigar.  She had promised to come down next Sunday and play to him again,
+and already in thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her
+to carry back to town.  It was a pleasure to give her a little pleasure,
+if it WERE pleasure from an old chap like him!  The carriage was already
+there when they arrived.  Just like that fellow, who was always late when
+he was wanted!  Old Jolyon went in for a minute to say good-bye.  The
+little dark hall of the flat was impregnated with a disagreeable odour of
+patchouli, and on a bench against the wall--its only furniture--he saw a
+figure sitting.  He heard Irene say softly: "Just one minute."  In the
+little drawing-room when the door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of
+your protegees?"
+
+"Yes.  Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."
+
+He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had frightened
+so many in its time.  The idea of her thus actually in contact with this
+outcast grieved and frightened him.  What could she do for them?
+Nothing.  Only soil and make trouble for herself, perhaps.  And he said:
+"Take care, my dear!  The world puts the worst construction on
+everything."
+
+"I know that."
+
+He was abashed by her quiet smile.  "Well then--Sunday," he murmured:
+"Good-bye."
+
+She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.
+
+"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself."  And he went out, not
+looking towards the figure on the bench.  He drove home by way of
+Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and tell them to
+send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy.  She must want picking-up
+sometimes!  Only in Richmond Park did he remember that he had gone up to
+order himself some boots, and was surprised that he could have had so
+paltry an idea.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had never
+pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy hours elapsing
+before Sunday came.  The spirit of the future, with the charm of the
+unknown, put up her lips instead.  Old Jolyon was not restless now, and
+paid no visits to the log, because she was coming to lunch.  There is
+wonderful finality about a meal; it removes a world of doubts, for no one
+misses meals except for reasons beyond control.  He played many games
+with Holly on the lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to
+be ready to bowl to Jolly in the holidays.  For she was not a Forsyte,
+but Jolly was--and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
+reached the age of eighty-five.  The dog Balthasar, in attendance, lay on
+the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded, till his face
+was like the harvest moon.  And because the time was getting shorter,
+each day was longer and more golden than the last. On Friday night he
+took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and though it was not the
+liver side, there is no remedy like that. Anyone telling him that he had
+found a new excitement in life and that excitement was not good for him,
+would have been met by one of those steady and rather defiant looks of
+his deep-set iron-grey eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own business
+best.'  He always had and always would.
+
+On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to church, he
+visited the strawberry beds.  There, accompanied by the dog Balthasar, he
+examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in finding at least two dozen
+berries which were really ripe. Stooping was not good for him, and he
+became very dizzy and red in the forehead.  Having placed the
+strawberries in a dish on the dining-table, he washed his hands and
+bathed his forehead with eau de Cologne.  There, before the mirror, it
+occurred to him that he was thinner.  What a 'threadpaper' he had been
+when he was young! It was nice to be slim--he could not bear a fat chap;
+and yet perhaps his cheeks were too thin!  She was to arrive by train at
+half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road past Drage's farm at
+the far end of the coppice.  And, having looked into June's room to see
+that there was hot water ready, he set forth to meet her, leisurely, for
+his heart was beating.  The air smelled sweet, larks sang, and the Grand
+Stand at Epsom was visible.  A perfect day!  On just such a one, no
+doubt, six years ago, Soames had brought young Bosinney down with him to
+look at the site before they began to build.  It was Bosinney who had
+pitched on the exact spot for the house--as June had often told him.  In
+these days he was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit
+were really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of
+seeing--her.  Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart, to whom
+she had given her whole self with rapture!  At his age one could not, of
+course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him a queer vague
+aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal jealousy; and a feeling,
+too, more generous, of pity for that love so early lost.  All over in a
+few poor months!  Well, well!  He looked at his watch before entering the
+coppice--only a quarter past, twenty-five minutes to wait!  And then,
+turning the corner of the path, he saw her exactly where he had seen her
+the first time, on the log; and realised that she must have come by the
+earlier train to sit there alone for a couple of hours at least.  Two
+hours of her society missed!  What memory could make that log so dear to
+her?  His face showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:
+
+"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."
+
+"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like.  You're looking a
+little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."
+
+That she should have to give lessons worried him.  Lessons to a parcel of
+young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.
+
+"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.
+
+"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."
+
+Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.
+
+"They love music, and they're very kind."
+
+"They had better be, by George!"  He took her arm--his side always hurt
+him a little going uphill--and said:
+
+"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups?  They came like that in
+a night."
+
+Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the flowers
+and the honey.  "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let them turn the
+cows in yet."  Then, remembering that she had come to talk about
+Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the stables:
+
+"I expect he wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of time,
+if I remember."
+
+But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he knew
+it was done that he might not feel she came because of her dead lover.
+
+"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph, "is my
+little sweet.  She'll be back from Church directly.  There's something
+about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did not seem to him
+peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of saying: "There's something
+about you which reminds me a little of her."  Ah! And here she was!
+
+Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose digestion
+had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of Strasbourg, came
+rushing towards them from under the oak tree.  She stopped about a dozen
+yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that this was all she had in her
+mind.  Old Jolyon, who knew better, said:
+
+"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."
+
+Holly raised herself and looked up.  He watched the two of them with a
+twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry, passing into
+a shy smile too, and then to something deeper.  She had a sense of
+beauty, that child--knew what was what!  He enjoyed the sight of the kiss
+between them.
+
+"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce.  Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"
+
+For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part of the
+service connected with this world absorbed what interest in church
+remained to him.  Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery hand clad in a
+black kid glove--she had been in the best families--and the rather sad
+eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask: "Are you well-brrred?"
+Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything unpleasing to her--a not uncommon
+occurrence--she would say to them: "The little Tayleurs never did
+that--they were such well-brrred little children."  Jolly hated the
+little Tayleurs; Holly wondered dreadfully how it was she fell so short
+of them.  'A thin rum little soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle
+Beauce.
+
+Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had picked
+in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another bottle of the
+Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic spirituality, and a
+conviction that he would have a touch of eczema to-morrow.
+
+After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee. It was
+no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew to write her
+Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been endangered in the past
+by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily in warning to the children to
+eat slowly and digest what they had eaten.  At the foot of the bank, on a
+carriage rug, Holly and the dog Balthasar teased and loved each other,
+and in the shade old Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar
+luxuriously savoured, gazed at Irene sitting in the swing.  A light,
+vaguely swaying, grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon
+it, lips just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped.
+She looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him!  The
+selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could still
+feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what he wanted,
+though much, was not quite all that mattered.
+
+"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it dull.
+But it's a pleasure to see you.  My little sweet is the only face which
+gives me any pleasure, except yours."
+
+From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be appreciated,
+and this reassured him.  "That's not humbug," he said. "I never told a
+woman I admired her when I didn't.  In fact I don't know when I've told a
+woman I admired her, except my wife in the old days; and wives are
+funny."  He was silent, but resumed abruptly:
+
+"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and there we
+were."  Her face looked mysteriously troubled, and, afraid that he had
+said something painful, he hurried on: "When my little sweet marries, I
+hope she'll find someone who knows what women feel.  I shan't be here to
+see it, but there's too much topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her
+to pitch up against that."  And, aware that he had made bad worse, he
+added: "That dog will scratch."
+
+A silence followed.  Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature whose
+life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made for love?
+Some day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find another mate--not so
+disorderly as that young fellow who had got himself run over.  Ah! but
+her husband?
+
+"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.  Her face had closed up suddenly.  For all her
+softness there was something irreconcilable about her.  And a glimpse of
+light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies strayed into a brain
+which, belonging to early Victorian civilisation--so much older than this
+of his old age--had never thought about such primitive things.
+
+"That's a comfort," he said.  "You can see the Grand Stand to-day. Shall
+we take a turn round?"
+
+Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls peach
+trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the stables, the
+vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the rosery, the
+summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen garden to see the
+tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of their pods with her
+finger, and lick up from the palm of her little brown hand.  Many
+delightful things he showed her, while Holly and the dog Balthasar danced
+ahead, or came to them at intervals for attention.  It was one of the
+happiest afternoons he had ever spent, but it tired him and he was glad
+to sit down in the music room and let her give him tea.  A special little
+friend of Holly's had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.
+And the two sported in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and
+up in the gallery.  Old Jolyon begged for Chopin.  She played studies,
+mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near, stood at the
+foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent forward, listening.
+Old Jolyon watched.
+
+"Let's see you dance, you two!"
+
+Shyly, with a false start, they began.  Bobbing and circling, earnest,
+not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the strains of that
+waltz.  He watched them and the face of her who was playing turned
+smiling towards those little dancers thinking:
+
+'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'
+
+A voice said:
+
+"Hollee! Mais enfin--qu'est-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!
+Viens, donc!"
+
+But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would save
+them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'
+
+"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle.  It's all my doing. Trot
+along, chicks, and have your tea."
+
+And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took every
+meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:
+
+"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones among
+your pupils?"
+
+"Yes, three--two of them darlings."
+
+"Pretty?"
+
+"Lovely!"
+
+Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very young.  "My
+little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be a musician some
+day.  You wouldn't give me your opinion of her playing, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her lessons."
+The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him; yet it would mean
+that he would see her regularly.  She left the piano and came over to his
+chair.
+
+"I would like, very much; but there is--June.  When are they coming
+back?"
+
+Old Jolyon frowned.  "Not till the middle of next month.  What does that
+matter?"
+
+"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
+Jolyon."
+
+Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.
+
+But as if answering, Irene shook her head.  "You know she couldn't; one
+doesn't forget."
+
+Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed finality:
+
+"Well, we shall see."
+
+He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred little
+things, till the carriage came round to take her home.  And when she had
+gone he went back to his chair, and sat there smoothing his face and
+chin, dreaming over the day.
+
+That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of paper.
+He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and stood under the
+masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'  He was not thinking of that
+picture, but of his life.  He was going to leave her something in his
+Will; nothing could so have stirred the stilly deeps of thought and
+memory.  He was going to leave her a portion of his wealth, of his
+aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--all that had made that wealth;
+going to leave her, too, a part of all he had missed in life, by his sane
+and steady pursuit of wealth.  All! What had he missed?  'Dutch Fishing
+Boats' responded blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing
+the curtain aside, opened it.  A wind had got up, and one of last year's
+oak leaves which had somehow survived the gardener's brooms, was dragging
+itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace in the
+twilight.  Except for that it was very quiet out there, and he could
+smell the heliotrope watered not long since.  A bat went by.  A bird
+uttered its last 'cheep.'  And right above the oak tree the first star
+shone.  Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of
+youth.  Morbid notion!  No such bargain was possible, that was real
+tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything.
+Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while you could, and
+leave it something in your Will.  But how much? And, as if he could not
+make that calculation looking out into the mild freedom of the country
+night, he turned back and went up to the chimney-piece.  There were his
+pet bronzes--a Cleopatra with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a
+greyhound playing with her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.
+'They last!' he thought, and a pang went through his heart.  They had a
+thousand years of life before them!
+
+'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old before her
+time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as possible, and grey
+from soiling that bright hair.  He might live another five years.  She
+would be well over thirty by then.  'How much?'  She had none of his
+blood in her!  In loyalty to the tenor of his life for forty years and
+more, ever since he married and founded that mysterious thing, a family,
+came this warning thought--None of his blood, no right to anything!  It
+was a luxury then, this notion.  An extravagance, a petting of an old
+man's whim, one of those things done in dotage.  His real future was
+vested in those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was
+gone. He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
+leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of cigars.
+And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her grey dress,
+fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him. Why! She cared
+nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that lost lover of hers.
+But she was there, whether she would or no, giving him pleasure with her
+beauty and grace.  One had no right to inflict an old man's company, no
+right to ask her down to play to him and let him look at her--for no
+reward!  Pleasure must be paid for in this world.  'How much?'  After
+all, there was plenty; his son and his three grandchildren would never
+miss that little lump. He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he
+could leave it where he liked, allow himself this little pleasure.  He
+went back to the bureau.  'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them
+think what they like.  I'm going to!'  And he sat down.
+
+'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with his
+money he could buy one year, one month of youth.  And startled by that
+thought, he wrote quickly:
+
+'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my niece
+Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes, fifteen
+thousand pounds free of legacy duty." 'Yours faithfully, 'JOLYON
+FORSYTE.'
+
+When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the window
+and drew in a long breath.  It was dark, but many stars shone now.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught him
+brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts.  Experience had also
+taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight showed the
+folly of such panic.  On this particular morning the thought which
+gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at his age not
+improbable, he would not see her.  From this it was but a step to
+realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son and June returned
+from Spain.  How could he justify desire for the company of one who had
+stolen--early morning does not mince words--June's lover?  That lover
+was dead; but June was a stubborn little thing; warm-hearted, but
+stubborn as wood, and--quite true--not one who forgot!  By the middle of
+next month they would be back.  He had barely five weeks left to enjoy
+the new interest which had come into what remained of his life.  Darkness
+showed up to him absurdly clear the nature of his feeling.  Admiration
+for beauty--a craving to see that which delighted his eyes.
+
+Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for asking
+June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his son and his
+son's wife from thinking him very queer?  He would be reduced to sneaking
+up to London, which tired him; and the least indisposition would cut him
+off even from that.  He lay with eyes open, setting his jaw against the
+prospect, and calling himself an old fool, while his heart beat loudly,
+and then seemed to stop beating altogether.  He had seen the dawn
+lighting the window chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the
+cocks crow, before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane.  Five
+weeks before he need bother, at his age an eternity!  But that early
+morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of one who
+had always had his own way.  He would see her as often as he wished!  Why
+not go up to town and make that codicil at his solicitor's instead of
+writing about it; she might like to go to the opera!  But, by train, for
+he would not have that fat chap Beacon grinning behind his back.
+Servants were such fools; and, as likely as not, they had known all the
+past history of Irene and young Bosinney--servants knew everything, and
+suspected the rest. He wrote to her that morning:
+
+"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow.  If you would like to
+have a look in at the opera, come and dine with me quietly ...."
+
+But where?  It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London save at
+his Club or at a private house.  Ah! that new-fangled place close to
+Covent Garden....
+
+"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether to
+expect you there at 7 o'clock."
+"Yours affectionately,
+"JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little pleasure;
+for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to see her was
+instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that one so old should
+go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a woman.
+
+The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his lawyer's,
+tired him.  It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner he lay down on
+the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little.  He must have had a sort of
+fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling very queer; and with some
+difficulty rose and rang the bell.  Why! it was past seven!  And there he
+was and she would be waiting.  But suddenly the dizziness came on again,
+and he was obliged to relapse on the sofa.  He heard the maid's voice
+say:
+
+"Did you ring, sir?"
+
+"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in front of
+his eyes.  "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."
+
+"Yes, sir."  Her voice sounded frightened.
+
+Old Jolyon made an effort.
+
+"Don't go.  Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the hall--a
+lady in grey.  Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat.  He is very sorry;
+if he is not down directly, she is not to wait dinner."
+
+When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in grey--she
+may be in anything.  Sal volatile!'  He did not go off again, yet was not
+conscious of how Irene came to be standing beside him, holding smelling
+salts to his nose, and pushing a pillow up behind his head.  He heard her
+say anxiously: "Dear Uncle Jolyon, what is it?" was dimly conscious of
+the soft pressure of her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of
+smelling salts, suddenly discovered strength in them, and sneezed.
+
+"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing.  How did you get here? Go down and
+dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table.  I shall be all right in a
+minute."
+
+He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat divided
+between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all right.
+
+"Why! You are in grey!" he said.  "Help me up."  Once on his feet he gave
+himself a shake.
+
+"What business had I to go off like that!"  And he moved very slowly to
+the glass.  What a cadaverous chap!  Her voice, behind him, murmured:
+
+"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!  A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights.  I can't
+have you missing the opera."
+
+But the journey down the corridor was troublesome.  What carpets they had
+in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up in them at every
+step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she looked, and said with the
+ghost of a twinkle:
+
+"I'm a pretty host."
+
+When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent its
+slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he felt much
+better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought such solicitude
+into her manner towards him.
+
+"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and watching
+the smile in her eyes, went on:
+
+"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life; plenty of
+that when you get to my age.  That's a nice dress--I like the style."
+
+"I made it myself."
+
+Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her
+interest in life.
+
+"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up.  I want to
+see some colour in your cheeks.  We mustn't waste life; it doesn't do.
+There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she won't be fat.  And
+Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap playing the Devil I
+can't imagine."
+
+But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from dinner
+the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his staying quiet
+and going to bed early.  When he parted from her at the door of the
+hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to Chelsea, he sat down again
+for a moment to enjoy the memory of her words: "You are such a darling to
+me, Uncle Jolyon!"  Why! Who wouldn't be!  He would have liked to stay up
+another day and take her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would
+bore her to death.  No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised
+to come then.  They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a
+month.  It would be something.  That little Mam'zelle Beauce wouldn't
+like it, but she would have to lump it.  And crushing his old opera hat
+against his chest he sought the lift.
+
+He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:
+'Drive me to Chelsea.'  But his sense of proportion was too strong.
+Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another aberration
+like that of last night, away from home.  Holly, too, was expecting him,
+and what he had in his bag for her.  Not that there was any cupboard love
+in his little sweet--she was a bundle of affection.  Then, with the
+rather bitter cynicism of the old, he wondered for a second whether it
+was not cupboard love which made Irene put up with him.  No, she was not
+that sort either.  She had, if anything, too little notion of how to
+butter her bread, no sense of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not
+breathed a word about that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the
+day was the good thereof.
+
+In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining the
+dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home. All the
+rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was content and
+peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long lingering sunshine
+showered gold on the lawns and the flowers.  But on Thursday evening at
+his lonely dinner he began to count the hours; sixty-five till he would
+go down to meet her again in the little coppice, and walk up through the
+fields at her side.  He had intended to consult the doctor about his
+fainting fit, but the fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no
+excitement and all that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did
+not want to be told of an infirmity--if there were one, could not afford
+to hear of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.
+And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to his son.
+It would only bring them back with a run!  How far this silence was due
+to consideration for their pleasure, how far to regard for his own, he
+did not pause to consider.
+
+That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was dozing
+off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious of a scent of
+violets.  Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in grey, standing by the
+fireplace, holding out her arms.  The odd thing was that, though those
+arms seemed to hold nothing, they were curved as if round someone's neck,
+and her own neck was bent back, her lips open, her eyes closed.  She
+vanished at once, and there were the mantelpiece and his bronzes.  But
+those bronzes and the mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only
+the fireplace and the wall!  Shaken and troubled, he got up.  'I must
+take medicine,' he thought; 'I can't be well.'  His heart beat too fast,
+he had an asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he
+opened it to get some air.  A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs
+at Gage's farm no doubt, beyond the coppice.  A beautiful still night,
+but dark.  'I dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it!  And yet I'll swear my
+eyes were open!'  A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.
+
+"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"
+
+Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he
+stepped out on the terrace.  Something soft scurried by in the dark.
+"Shoo!"  It was that great grey cat.  'Young Bosinney was like a great
+cat!' he thought.  'It was him in there, that she--that she was--He's
+got her still!'  He walked to the edge of the terrace, and looked down
+into the darkness; he could just see the powdering of the daisies on the
+unmown lawn.  Here to-day and gone to-morrow!  And there came the moon,
+who saw all, young and old, alive and dead, and didn't care a dump!  His
+own turn soon.  For a single day of youth he would give what was left!
+And he turned again towards the house.  He could see the windows of the
+night nursery up there.  His little sweet would be asleep.  'Hope that
+dog won't wake her!' he thought.  'What is it makes us love, and makes us
+die!  I must go to bed.'
+
+And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he passed
+back within.
+
+How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his well-spent
+past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating warmth, only pale
+winter sunshine.  The shell can withstand the gentle beating of the
+dynamos of memory.  The present he should distrust; the future shun.
+From beneath thick shade he should watch the sunlight creeping at his
+toes.  If there be sun of summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking
+it for the Indian-summer sun!  Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,
+slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his wind-pipe and
+he gasps away to death some early morning before the world is aired, and
+they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of years!' yea!  If he
+preserve his principles in perfect order, a Forsyte may live on long
+after he is dead.
+
+Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that which
+transcended Forsyteism.  For it is written that a Forsyte shall not love
+beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own health.  And
+something beat within him in these days that with each throb fretted at
+the thinning shell.  His sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he
+could not stop that beating, nor would if he could.  And yet, if you had
+told him he was living on his capital, he would have stared you down.
+No, no; a man did not live on his capital; it was not done!  The
+shibboleths of the past are ever more real than the actualities of the
+present.  And he, to whom living on one's capital had always been
+anathema, could not have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his
+own case. Pleasure is healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the
+youth of the young--and what else on earth was he doing!
+
+Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now arranged his
+time.  On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train; Irene came and dined
+with him.  And they went to the opera.  On Thursdays he drove to town,
+and, putting that fat chap and his horses up, met her in Kensington
+Gardens, picking up the carriage after he had left her, and driving home
+again in time for dinner. He threw out the casual formula that he had
+business in London on those two days.  On Wednesdays and Saturdays she
+came down to give Holly music lessons.  The greater the pleasure he took
+in her society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a
+matter-of-fact and friendly uncle.  Not even in feeling, really, was he
+more--for, after all, there was his age.  And yet, if she were late he
+fidgeted himself to death.  If she missed coming, which happened twice,
+his eyes grew sad as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.
+
+And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his
+heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof.  Who could have
+believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his son's
+and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread! There was such
+a delicious freedom, such recovery of that independence a man enjoys
+before he founds a family, about these weeks of lovely weather, and this
+new companionship with one who demanded nothing, and remained always a
+little unknown, retaining the fascination of mystery.  It was like a
+draught of wine to him who has been drinking water for so long that he
+has almost forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to
+his brain.  The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and the
+sunlight had a living value--were no longer mere reminders of past
+enjoyment.  There was something now to live for which stirred him
+continually to anticipation.  He lived in that, not in retrospection; the
+difference is considerable to any so old as he. The pleasures of the
+table, never of much consequence to one naturally abstemious, had lost
+all value.  He ate little, without knowing what he ate; and every day
+grew thinner and more worn to look at.  He was again a 'threadpaper'; and
+to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples,
+gave more dignity than ever.  He was very well aware that he ought to see
+the doctor, but liberty was too sweet.  He could not afford to pet his
+frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the expense of
+liberty.  Return to the vegetable existence he had led among the
+agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels, before this new
+attraction came into his life--no! He exceeded his allowance of cigars.
+Two a day had always been his rule.  Now he smoked three and sometimes
+four--a man will when he is filled with the creative spirit.  But very
+often he thought: 'I must give up smoking, and coffee; I must give up
+rattling up to town.'  But he did not; there was no one in any sort of
+authority to notice him, and this was a priceless boon.
+
+The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb. Mam'zelle
+Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too 'wellbrrred' to
+make personal allusions.  Holly had not as yet an eye for the relative
+appearance of him who was her plaything and her god.  It was left for
+Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to rest in the hot part of the day,
+to take a tonic, and so forth. But she did not tell him that she was the
+a cause of his thinness--for one cannot see the havoc oneself is
+working.  A man of eighty-five has no passions, but the Beauty which
+produces passion works on in the old way, till death closes the eyes
+which crave the sight of Her.
+
+On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter from his
+son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday. This had
+always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic improvidence
+given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he had never quite
+admitted it.  Now he did, and something would have to be done.  He had
+ceased to be able to imagine life without this new interest, but that
+which is not imagined sometimes exists, as Forsytes are perpetually
+finding to their cost.  He sat in his old leather chair, doubling up the
+letter, and mumbling with his lips the end of an unlighted cigar.  After
+to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions to town would have to be abandoned.  He
+could still drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his
+man of business.  But even that would be dependent on his health, for now
+they would begin to fuss about him.  The lessons!  The lessons must go
+on!  She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her feelings
+in her pocket.  She had done so once, on the day after the news of
+Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely do again now.
+Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--not Christian to keep
+the memory of old sores alive.  June's will was strong, but his was
+stronger, for his sands were running out. Irene was soft, surely she
+would do this for him, subdue her natural shrinking, sooner than give him
+pain!  The lessons must continue; for if they did, he was secure.  And
+lighting his cigar at last, he began trying to shape out how to put it to
+them all, and explain this strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away
+from the naked truth--that he could not bear to be deprived of the sight
+of beauty.  Ah! Holly!  Holly was fond of her, Holly liked her lessons.
+She would save him--his little sweet!  And with that happy thought he
+became serene, and wondered what he had been worrying about so fearfully.
+He must not worry, it left him always curiously weak, and as if but half
+present in his own body.
+
+That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though he did
+not faint.  He would not ring the bell, because he knew it would mean a
+fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more conspicuous.  When one
+grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy to limit freedom, and for
+what reason?--just to keep the breath in him a little longer.  He did not
+want it at such cost.  Only the dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery
+from that weakness; anxiously watched his master go to the sideboard and
+drink some brandy, instead of giving him a biscuit.  When at last old
+Jolyon felt able to tackle the stairs he went up to bed.  And, though
+still shaky next morning, the thought of the evening sustained and
+strengthened him.  It was always such a pleasure to give her a good
+dinner--he suspected her of undereating when she was alone; and, at the
+opera to watch her eyes glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her
+lips.  She hadn't much pleasure, and this was the last time he would be
+able to give her that treat.  But when he was packing his bag he caught
+himself wishing that he had not the fatigue of dressing for dinner before
+him, and the exertion, too, of telling her about June's return.
+
+The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last entr'acte to
+break the news, instinctively putting it off till the latest moment.
+
+She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had taken
+it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence became necessary.
+The mask was down over her face, that mask behind which so much went on
+that he could not see.  She wanted time to think it over, no doubt!  He
+would not press her, for she would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow
+afternoon, and he should see her then when she had got used to the idea.
+In the cab he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old
+days, but this one was not bad at all.  When he took her hand to say
+good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.
+
+"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."
+
+"To-morrow then," he said.  "Good-night.  Sleep well."  She echoed
+softly: "Sleep well" and from the cab window, already moving away, he saw
+her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in a gesture
+which seemed to linger.
+
+He sought his room slowly.  They never gave him the same, and he could
+not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new furniture and
+grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink roses.  He was wakeful
+and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in his head.
+
+His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he knew, if
+it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable. Well, there was
+in life something which upset all your care and plans--something which
+made men and women dance to its pipes.  And he lay staring from deep-sunk
+eyes into the darkness where the unaccountable held sway.  You thought
+you had hold of life, but it slipped away behind you, took you by the
+scruff of the neck, forced you here and forced you there, and then,
+likely as not, squeezed life out of you!  It took the very stars like
+that, he shouldn't wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them
+apart; it had never done playing its pranks.  Five million people in this
+great blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that
+Life-Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board when
+you struck your fist on it.  Ah, well! Himself would not hop much
+longer--a good long sleep would do him good!
+
+How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had kissed
+it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had known the very
+place and wanted to kiss it all away for him.  But, instead, her lips
+left a patch of grievous uneasiness.  She had never spoken in quite that
+voice, had never before made that lingering gesture or looked back at him
+as she drove away.
+
+He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced down over
+the river.  There was little air, but the sight of that breadth of water
+flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him.  'The great thing,' he thought
+'is not to make myself a nuisance.  I'll think of my little sweet, and go
+to sleep.'  But it was long before the heat and throbbing of the London
+night died out into the short slumber of the summer morning.  And old
+Jolyon had but forty winks.
+
+When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and with
+the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers, gathered a great
+bunch of carnations.  They were, he told her, for 'the lady in grey'--a
+name still bandied between them; and he put them in a bowl in his study
+where he meant to tackle Irene the moment she came, on the subject of
+June and future lessons.  Their fragrance and colour would help.  After
+lunch he lay down, for he felt very tired, and the carriage would not
+bring her from the station till four o'clock.  But as the hour approached
+he grew restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.
+The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle Beauce,
+sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending to their
+silkworms.  Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these methodical
+creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of elephants; who nibbled
+such quantities of holes in nice green leaves; and smelled, as he
+thought, horrid.  He sat down on a chintz-covered windowseat whence he
+could see the drive, and get what air there was; and the dog Balthasar
+who appreciated chintz on hot days, jumped up beside him.  Over the
+cottage piano a violet dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and
+on it the first lavender, whose scent filled the room.  In spite of the
+coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life
+vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses.  Each sunbeam which came
+through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong;
+the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up their
+grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head bent over
+them had a wonderfully silky sheen.  A marvellous cruelly strong thing
+was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock you with its
+multitude of forms and its beating vitality.  He had never, till those
+last few weeks, had this curious feeling of being with one half of him
+eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and with the other half left
+on the bank, watching that helpless progress.  Only when Irene was with
+him did he lose this double consciousness.
+
+Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
+piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said slyly:
+
+"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"
+
+Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was clouded;
+then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:
+
+"Who's been dressing her up?"
+
+"Mam'zelle."
+
+"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"
+
+That prim little Frenchwoman!  She hadn't yet got over the music lessons
+being taken away from her.  That wouldn't help.  His little sweet was the
+only friend they had.  Well, they were her lessons. And he shouldn't
+budge shouldn't budge for anything.  He stroked the warm wool on
+Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When mother's home, there won't
+be any changes, will there?  She doesn't like strangers, you know."
+
+The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of opposition
+about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his new-found freedom.
+Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an old man at the mercy of
+care and love, or fight to keep this new and prized companionship; and to
+fight tired him to death.  But his thin, worn face hardened into
+resolution till it appeared all Jaw. This was his house, and his affair;
+he should not budge!  He looked at his watch, old and thin like himself;
+he had owned it fifty years.  Past four already!  And kissing the top of
+Holly's head in passing, he went down to the hall.  He wanted to get hold
+of her before she went up to give her lesson.  At the first sound of
+wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the victoria
+was empty.
+
+"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."
+
+Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push away
+that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter disappointment
+he was feeling.
+
+"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house.  He went to his
+study and sat down, quivering like a leaf.  What did this mean? She might
+have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't. 'Good-bye, dear
+Uncle Jolyon.'  Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-night'?  And that hand of
+hers lingering in the air.  And her kiss. What did it mean?  Vehement
+alarm and irritation took possession of him.  He got up and began to pace
+the Turkey carpet, between window and wall.  She was going to give him
+up!  He felt it for certain--and he defenceless.  An old man wanting to
+look on beauty!  It was ridiculous!  Age closed his mouth, paralysed his
+power to fight. He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to
+anything but memories and sorrow.  He could not plead with her; even an
+old man has his dignity.  Defenceless!  For an hour, lost to bodily
+fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had
+plucked, which mocked him with its scent.  Of all things hard to bear,
+the prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has always had his
+way.  Nature had got him in its net, and like an unhappy fish he turned
+and swam at the meshes, here and there, found no hole, no breaking point.
+They brought him tea at five o'clock, and a letter.  For a moment hope
+beat up in him.  He cut the envelope with the butter knife, and read:
+
+"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
+disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night.  I feel I
+can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that June is coming
+back.  Some things go too deep to be forgotten.  It has been such a joy
+to see you and Holly.  Perhaps I shall still see you sometimes when you
+come up, though I'm sure it's not good for you; I can see you are tiring
+yourself too much.  I believe you ought to rest quite quietly all this
+hot weather, and now you have your son and June coming back you will be
+so happy.  Thank you a million times for all your sweetness to me.
+
+"Lovingly your IRENE."
+
+So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he chiefly
+cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end of all things,
+the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling footsteps.  Not good
+for him!  Not even she could see how she was his new lease of interest in
+life, the incarnation of all the beauty he felt slipping from him.
+
+His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he paced,
+torn between his dignity and his hold on life.  Intolerable to be
+squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on when your will
+was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to the ground with care
+and love.  Intolerable!  He would see what telling her the truth would
+do--the truth that he wanted the sight of her more than just a lingering
+on.  He sat down at his old bureau and took a pen.  But he could not
+write.  There was something revolting in having to plead like this; plead
+that she should warm his eyes with her beauty.  It was tantamount to
+confessing dotage.  He simply could not.  And instead, he wrote:
+
+"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to stand
+in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my little
+grand-daughter.  But old men learn to forego their whims; they are
+obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner or later; and
+perhaps the sooner the better.
+"My love to you,
+"JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it.  I'm tired.'  He sealed and
+dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it fall to the
+bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward to!'
+
+That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his cigar
+which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went very slowly
+upstairs and stole into the night-nursery.  He sat down on the
+window-seat.  A night-light was burning, and he could just see Holly's
+face, with one hand underneath the cheek.  An early cockchafer buzzed in
+the Japanese paper with which they had filled the grate, and one of the
+horses in the stable stamped restlessly. To sleep like that child!  He
+pressed apart two rungs of the venetian blind and looked out.  The moon
+was rising, blood-red.  He had never seen so red a moon.  The woods and
+fields out there were dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the
+summer light. And beauty, like a spirit, walked.  'I've had a long life,'
+he thought, 'the best of nearly everything.  I'm an ungrateful chap; I've
+seen a lot of beauty in my time.  Poor young Bosinney said I had a sense
+of beauty.  There's a man in the moon to-night!'  A moth went by,
+another, another.  'Ladies in grey!'  He closed his eyes.  A feeling that
+he would never open them again beset him; he let it grow, let himself
+sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the lids up.  There was something
+wrong with him, no doubt, deeply wrong; he would have to have the doctor
+after all.  It didn't much matter now!  Into that coppice the moon-light
+would have crept; there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the
+only things awake.  No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the shadows
+--moving; 'Ladies in grey!'  Over that log they would climb; would
+whisper together.  She and Bosinney!  Funny thought!  And the frogs and
+little things would whisper too!  How the clock ticked, in here!  It was
+all eerie--out there in the light of that red moon; in here with the
+little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and the nurse's
+dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen, tall, like a woman's
+figure.  'Lady in grey!'  And a very odd thought beset him: Did she
+exist?  Had she ever come at all?  Or was she but the emanation of all
+the beauty he had loved and must leave so soon?  The violet-grey spirit
+with the dark eyes and the crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and
+the moonlight, and at blue-bell time?  What was she, who was she, did she
+exist?  He rose and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him
+a sense of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door.  He
+stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his eyes
+fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in defence.  He
+tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage; reached his room,
+undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in his night-shirt.  What a
+scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and thin legs! His eyes resisted his
+own image, and a look of pride came on his face.  All was in league to
+pull him down, even his reflection in the glass, but he was not
+down--yet!  He got into bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying
+to reach resignation, only too well aware that fretting and
+disappointment were very bad for him.
+
+He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and strengthless that he sent for
+the doctor.  After sounding him, the fellow pulled a face as long as your
+arm, and ordered him to stay in bed and give up smoking.  That was no
+hardship; there was nothing to get up for, and when he felt ill, tobacco
+always lost its savour.  He spent the morning languidly with the
+sun-blinds down, turning and re-turning The Times, not reading much, the
+dog Balthasar lying beside his bed. With his lunch they brought him a
+telegram, running thus:
+
+'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you at
+four-thirty.  Irene.'
+
+Coming down!  After all!  Then she did exist--and he was not deserted.
+Coming down!  A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks and forehead felt
+hot.  He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-table away, lying very quiet
+until they had removed lunch and left him alone; but every now and then
+his eyes twinkled.  Coming down! His heart beat fast, and then did not
+seem to beat at all.  At three o'clock he got up and dressed
+deliberately, noiselessly. Holly and Mam'zelle would be in the
+schoolroom, and the servants asleep after their dinner, he shouldn't
+wonder.  He opened his door cautiously, and went downstairs.  In the hall
+the dog Balthasar lay solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed
+into his study and out into the burning afternoon.  He meant to go down
+and meet her in the coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in
+this heat.  He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing, and the
+dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him. He sat there
+smiling.  What a revel of bright minutes!  What a hum of insects, and
+cooing of pigeons!  It was the quintessence of a summer day.  Lovely!
+And he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, whatever that might be.  She was
+coming; she had not given him up!  He had everything in life he
+wanted--except a little more breath, and less weight--just here!  He
+would see her when she emerged from the fernery, come swaying just a
+little, a violet-grey figure passing over the daisies and dandelions and
+'soldiers' on the lawn--the soldiers with their flowery crowns.  He would
+not move, but she would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am
+sorry!' and sit in the swing and let him look at her and tell her that he
+had not been very well but was all right now; and that dog would lick her
+hand.  That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a good dog.
+
+It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him, only
+make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the Grand Stand at
+Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows cropping the clover in the
+field and swishing at the flies with their tails.  He smelled the scent
+of limes, and lavender.  Ah! that was why there was such a racket of
+bees.  They were excited--busy, as his heart was busy and excited.
+Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on honey and happiness; as his heart was
+drugged and drowsy.  Summer--summer--they seemed saying; great bees and
+little bees, and the flies too!
+
+The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here. He would
+have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep of late; and
+then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and beauty, coming
+towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey! And settling back in
+his chair he closed his eyes.  Some thistle-down came on what little air
+there was, and pitched on his moustache more white than itself.  He did
+not know; but his breathing stirred it, caught there.  A ray of sunlight
+struck through and lodged on his boot.  A bumble-bee alighted and
+strolled on the crown of his Panama hat.  And the delicious surge of
+slumber reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward
+and rested on his breast.  Summer--summer!  So went the hum.
+
+The stable clock struck the quarter past.  The dog Balthasar stretched
+and looked up at his master.  The thistledown no longer moved.  The dog
+placed his chin over the sunlit foot.  It did not stir.  The dog withdrew
+his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old Jolyon's lap, looked in his
+face, whined; then, leaping down, sat on his haunches, gazing up.  And
+suddenly he uttered a long, long howl.
+
+But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old master.
+
+Summer--summer--summer!  The soundless footsteps on the grass!
+1917
+
+
+
+
+IN CHANCERY
+
+Two households both alike in dignity, From ancient grudge, break into new
+mutiny.
+
+--Romeo and Juliet
+TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD
+
+
+
+
+PART 1
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AT TIMOTHY'S
+
+The possessive instinct never stands still.  Through florescence and
+feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression even in the
+Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever. Nor can it be
+dissociated from environment any more than the quality of potato from the
+soil.
+
+The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his good
+time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from self-contented and
+contained provincialism to still more self-contented if less contained
+imperialism--in other words, the 'possessive' instinct of the nation on
+the move.  And so, as if in conformity, was it with the Forsyte family.
+They were spreading not merely on the surface, but within.
+
+When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed her
+husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was cremated, it
+made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes left.  For this
+apathy there were three causes.  First: the almost surreptitious burial
+of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill--first of the Forsytes to
+desert the family grave at Highgate.  That burial, coming a year after
+Swithin's entirely proper funeral, had occasioned a great deal of talk on
+Forsyte 'Change, the abode of Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road,
+London, which still collected and radiated family gossip.  Opinions
+ranged from the lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of
+Francie that it was 'a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate
+business.'  Uncle Jolyon in his later years--indeed, ever since the
+strange and lamentable affair between his granddaughter June's lover,
+young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte's wife--had
+noticeably rapped the family's knuckles; and that way of his own which he
+had always taken had begun to seem to them a little wayward.  The
+philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been too liable to crop
+out of the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they were in a way prepared for
+his interment in a strange spot.  But the whole thing was an odd
+business, and when the contents of his Will became current coin on
+Forsyte 'Change, a shiver had gone round the clan.  Out of his estate
+(L145,304 gross, with liabilities L35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left
+L15,000 to "whomever do you think, my dear?  To Irene!" that runaway wife
+of his nephew Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family,
+and--still more amazing was to him no blood relation.  Not out and out,
+of course; only a life interest--only the income from it!  Still, there
+it was; and old Jolyon's claim to be the perfect Forsyte was ended once
+for all.  That, then, was the first reason why the burial of Susan
+Hayman--at Woking--made little stir.
+
+The second reason was altogether more expansive and imperial. Besides the
+house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by Hayman when he
+died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman boys had learned to
+be such good shots and riders, as it was believed, which was of course
+nice for them, and creditable to everybody; and the fact of owning
+something really countrified seemed somehow to excuse the dispersion of
+her remains--though what could have put cremation into her head they
+could not think!  The usual invitations, however, had been issued, and
+Soames had gone down and young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite
+satisfactory so far as it went, for she had only had a life interest; and
+everything had gone quite smoothly to the children in equal shares.
+
+The third reason why Susan's burial made little stir was the most
+expansive of all.  It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the pale, the
+thin: "Well, I think people have a right to their own bodies, even when
+they're dead."  Coming from a daughter of Nicholas, a Liberal of the old
+school and most tyrannical, it was a startling remark--showing in a flash
+what a lot of water had run under bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in
+'86, just when the proprietorship of Soames over his wife's body was
+acquiring the uncertainty which had led to such disaster.  Euphemia, of
+course, spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over
+thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte.  But, making all allowances,
+her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the principle of liberty,
+decentralisation and shift in the central point of possession from others
+to oneself.  When Nicholas heard his daughter's remark from Aunt Hester
+he had rapped out: "Wives and daughters!  There's no end to their liberty
+in these days.  I knew that 'Jackson' case would lead to things--lugging
+in Habeas Corpus like that!"  He had, of course, never really forgiven
+the Married Woman's Property Act, which would so have interfered with him
+if he had not mercifully married before it was passed.  But, in truth,
+there was no denying the revolt among the younger Forsytes against being
+owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial disposition to own oneself,
+which is the paradoxical forerunner of Imperialism, was making progress
+all the time.  They were all now married, except George, confirmed to the
+Turf and the Iseeum Club; Francie, pursuing her musical career in a
+studio off the King's Road, Chelsea, and still taking 'lovers' to dances;
+Euphemia, living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two
+Dromios, Giles and Jesse Hayman.  Of the third generation there were not
+very many--young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young Nicholas
+six already, young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one; St. John Hayman
+two.  But the rest of the sixteen married--Soames, Rachel and Cicely of
+James' family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger's; Ernest, Archibald and
+Florence of Nicholas'; Augustus and Annabel Spender of the Hayman's--were
+going down the years unreproduced.
+
+Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been born;
+but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only seventeen
+descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there would be more than
+a further unconsidered trifle or so.  A student of statistics must have
+noticed that the birth rate had varied in accordance with the rate of
+interest for your money.  Grandfather 'Superior Dosset' Forsyte in the
+early nineteenth century had been getting ten per cent. for his, hence
+ten children.  Those ten, leaving out the four who had not married, and
+Juley, whose husband Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once,
+had averaged from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced
+accordingly. The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting barely
+three per cent. in the Consols to which their father had mostly tied the
+Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them who had
+been reproduced had seventeen children, or just the proper two and
+five-sixths per stem.
+
+There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction.  A distrust of
+their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency is guaranteed, together
+with the knowledge that their fathers did not die, kept them cautious.
+If one had children and not much income, the standard of taste and
+comfort must of necessity go down; what was enough for two was not enough
+for four, and so on--it would be better to wait and see what Father did.
+Besides, it was nice to be able to take holidays unhampered.  Sooner in
+fact than own children, they preferred to concentrate on the ownership of
+themselves, conforming to the growing tendency fin de siecle, as it was
+called.  In this way, little risk was run, and one would be able to have
+a motor-car.  Indeed, Eustace already had one, but it had shaken him
+horribly, and broken one of his eye teeth; so that it would be better to
+wait till they were a little safer.  In the meantime, no more children!
+Even young Nicholas was drawing in his horns, and had made no addition to
+his six for quite three years.
+
+The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion rather,
+of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so far as to prevent
+a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899.  It had been a glorious summer,
+and after holidays abroad and at the sea they were practically all back
+in London, when Roger with a touch of his old originality had suddenly
+breathed his last at his own house in Princes Gardens.  At Timothy's it
+was whispered sadly that poor Roger had always been eccentric about his
+digestion--had he not, for instance, preferred German mutton to all the
+other brands?
+
+Be that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and coming
+away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for his Uncle
+Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.  The 'Old Things'--Aunt Juley and Aunt
+Hester--would like to hear about it.  His father--James--at eighty-eight
+had not felt up to the fatigue of the funeral; and Timothy himself, of
+course, had not gone; so that Nicholas had been the only brother present.
+Still, there had been a fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley
+and Hester up to know.  The kindly thought was not unmixed with the
+inevitable longing to get something out of everything you do, which is
+the chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the saner elements in
+every nation.  In this practice of taking family matters to Timothy's in
+the Bayswater Road, Soames was but following in the footsteps of his
+father, who had been in the habit of going at least once a week to see
+his sisters at Timothy's, and had only given it up when he lost his nerve
+at eighty-six, and could not go out without Emily.  To go with Emily was
+of no use, for who could really talk to anyone in the presence of his own
+wife?  Like James in the old days, Soames found time to go there nearly
+every Sunday, and sit in the little drawing-room into which, with his
+undoubted taste, he had introduced a good deal of change and china not
+quite up to his own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful
+Barbizon pictures, at Christmastides.  He himself, who had done extremely
+well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved towards the
+Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do better.  In the
+riverside house which he now inhabited near Mapledurham he had a gallery,
+beautifully hung and lighted, to which few London dealers were strangers.
+It served, too, as a Sunday afternoon attraction in those week-end
+parties which his sisters, Winifred or Rachel, occasionally organised for
+him.  For though he was but a taciturn showman, his quiet collected
+determinism seldom failed to influence his guests, who knew that his
+reputation was grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his power of
+gauging the future of market values.  When he went to Timothy's he almost
+always had some little tale of triumph over a dealer to unfold, and
+dearly he loved that coo of pride with which his aunts would greet it.
+This afternoon, however, he was differently animated, coming from Roger's
+funeral in his neat dark clothes--not quite black, for after all an uncle
+was but an uncle, and his soul abhorred excessive display of feeling.
+Leaning back in a marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted nose at
+the sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably silent.
+Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the peculiar Forsyte
+build of his face was seen to the best advantage this afternoon--a face
+concave and long, with a jaw which divested of flesh would have seemed
+extravagant: altogether a chinny face though not at all ill-looking.  He
+was feeling more strongly than ever that Timothy's was hopelessly
+'rum-ti-too' and the souls of his aunts dismally mid-Victorian.  The
+subject on which alone he wanted to talk--his own undivorced
+position--was unspeakable.  And yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion
+of all else.  It was only since the Spring that this had been so and a
+new feeling grown up which was egging him on towards what he knew might
+well be folly in a Forsyte of forty-five.  More and more of late he had
+been conscious that he was 'getting on.'  The fortune already
+considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had finally
+wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with surprising vigour in
+the twelve lonely years during which he had devoted himself to little
+else.  He was worth to-day well over a hundred thousand pounds, and had
+no one to leave it to--no real object for going on with what was his
+religion.  Even if he were to relax his efforts, money made money, and he
+felt that he would have a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where
+he was.  There had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side
+to Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now had
+crept out again in this his 'prime of life.'  Concreted and focussed of
+late by the attraction of a girl's undoubted beauty, it had become a
+veritable prepossession.
+
+And this girl was French, not likely to lose her head, or accept any
+unlegalised position. Moreover, Soames himself disliked the thought of
+that.  He had tasted of the sordid side of sex during those long years of
+forced celibacy, secretively, and always with disgust, for he was
+fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate.  He wanted no hole and
+corner liaison.  A marriage at the Embassy in Paris, a few months'
+travel, and he could bring Annette back quite separated from a past which
+in truth was not too distinguished, for she only kept the accounts in her
+mother's Soho Restaurant; he could bring her back as something very new
+and chic with her French taste and self-possession, to reign at 'The
+Shelter' near Mapledurham.  On Forsyte 'Change and among his riverside
+friends it would be current that he had met a charming French girl on his
+travels and married her.  There would be the flavour of romance, and a
+certain cachet about a French wife.  No! He was not at all afraid of
+that.  It was only this cursed undivorced condition of his, and--and the
+question whether Annette would take him, which he dared not put to the
+touch until he had a clear and even dazzling future to offer her.
+
+In his aunts' drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those usual
+questions: How was his dear father?  Not going out, of course, now that
+the weather was turning chilly?  Would Soames be sure to tell him that
+Hester had found boiled holly leaves most comforting for that pain in her
+side; a poultice every three hours, with red flannel afterwards.  And
+could he relish just a little pot of their very best prune preserve--it
+was so delicious this year, and had such a wonderful effect.  Oh! and
+about the Darties--had Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most
+distressing time with Montague?  Timothy thought she really ought to have
+protection It was said--but Soames mustn't take this for certain--that he
+had given some of Winifred's jewellery to a dreadful dancer. It was such
+a bad example for dear Val just as he was going to college.  Soames had
+not heard?  Oh, but he must go and see his sister and look into it at
+once!  And did he think these Boers were really going to resist?  Timothy
+was in quite a stew about it.  The price of Consols was so high, and he
+had such a lot of money in them.  Did Soames think they must go down if
+there was a war? Soames nodded.  But it would be over very quickly.  It
+would be so bad for Timothy if it wasn't.  And of course Soames' dear
+father would feel it very much at his age.  Luckily poor dear Roger had
+been spared this dreadful anxiety.  And Aunt Juley with a little
+handkerchief wiped away the large tear trying to climb the permanent pout
+on her now quite withered left cheek; she was remembering dear Roger, and
+all his originality, and how he used to stick pins into her when they
+were little together.  Aunt Hester, with her instinct for avoiding the
+unpleasant, here chimed in: Did Soames think they would make Mr.
+Chamberlain Prime Minister at once?  He would settle it all so quickly.
+She would like to see that old Kruger sent to St. Helena.  She could
+remember so well the news of Napoleon's death, and what a, relief it had
+been to his grandfather.  Of course she and Juley--"We were in
+pantalettes then, my dear"--had not felt it much at the time.
+
+Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate three of
+those macaroons for which Timothy's was famous.  His faint, pale,
+supercilious smile had deepened just a little.  Really, his family
+remained hopelessly provincial, however much of London they might possess
+between them.  In these go-ahead days their provincialism stared out even
+more than it used to.  Why, old Nicholas was still a Free Trader, and a
+member of that antediluvian home of Liberalism, the Remove Club--though,
+to be sure, the members were pretty well all Conservatives now, or he
+himself could not have joined; and Timothy, they said, still wore a
+nightcap.  Aunt Juley spoke again.  Dear Soames was looking so well,
+hardly a day older than he did when dear Ann died, and they were all
+there together, dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear Roger.  She
+paused and caught the tear which had climbed the pout on her right cheek.
+Did he--did he ever hear anything of Irene nowadays?  Aunt Hester visibly
+interposed her shoulder.  Really, Juley was always saying something!  The
+smile left Soames' face, and he put his cup down. Here was his subject
+broached for him, and for all his desire to expand, he could not take
+advantage.
+
+Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:
+
+"They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out and out;
+then of course he saw it would not be right, and made it for her life
+only."
+
+Had Soames heard that?
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now.  He is her trustee; you knew that,
+of course?"
+
+Soames shook his head.  He did know, but wished to show no interest.
+Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of Bosinney's death.
+
+"He must be quite middle-aged by now," went on Aunt Juley dreamily. "Let
+me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in Mount Street; long
+before they went to Stanhope Gate in December.  Just before that dreadful
+Commune.  Over fifty!  Fancy that!  Such a pretty baby, and we were all
+so proud of him; the very first of you all."  Aunt Juley sighed, and a
+lock of not quite her own hair came loose and straggled, so that Aunt
+Hester gave a little shiver. Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious
+piece of self-discovery. That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was
+not yet closed.  He had come thinking he could talk of it, even wanting
+to talk of his fettered condition, and--behold! he was shrinking away
+from this reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her Malapropisms.
+
+Oh, Soames was not going already!
+
+Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:
+
+"Yes.  Good-bye.  Remember me to Uncle Timothy!"  And, leaving a cold
+kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and cling to his lips
+as if longing to be kissed away, he left them looking brightly after
+him--dear Soames, it had been so good of him to come to-day, when they
+were not feeling very....!
+
+With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs, where
+was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor and port wine, and house
+where draughts are not permitted.  The poor old things--he had not meant
+to be unkind!  And in the street he instantly forgot them, repossessed by
+the image of Annette and the thought of the cursed coil around him.  Why
+had he not pushed the thing through and obtained divorce when that
+wretched Bosinney was run over, and there was evidence galore for the
+asking!  And he turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie's residence in
+Green Street, Mayfair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD
+
+That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of fortunes as
+Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he had inhabited twenty
+years at least would have been more noticeable if the rent, rates, taxes,
+and repairs of that house had not been defrayed by his father-in-law.  By
+that simple if wholesale device James Forsyte had secured a certain
+stability in the lives of his daughter and his grandchildren.  After all,
+there is something invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a
+sportsman so dashing as Dartie.  Until the events of the last few days he
+had been almost-supernaturally steady all this year.  The fact was he had
+acquired a half share in a filly of George Forsyte's, who had gone
+irreparably on the turf, to the horror of Roger, now stilled by the
+grave.  Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of Shirt-on-fire, by Suspender, was
+a bay filly, three years old, who for a variety of reasons had never
+shown her true form.  With half ownership of this hopeful animal, all the
+idealism latent somewhere in Dartie, as in every other man, had put up
+its head, and kept him quietly ardent for months past.  When a man has
+some thing good to live for it is astonishing how sober he becomes; and
+what Dartie had was really good--a three to one chance for an autumn
+handicap, publicly assessed at twenty-five to one.  The old-fashioned
+heaven was a poor thing beside it, and his shirt was on the daughter of
+Shirt-on-fire.  But how much more than his shirt depended on this
+granddaughter of Suspender!  At that roving age of forty-five, trying to
+Forsytes--and, though perhaps less distinguishable from any other age,
+trying even to Darties--Montague had fixed his current fancy on a dancer.
+It was no mean passion, but without money, and a good deal of it, likely
+to remain a love as airy as her skirts; and Dartie never had any money,
+subsisting miserably on what he could beg or borrow from Winifred--a
+woman of character, who kept him because he was the father of her
+children, and from a lingering admiration for those now-dying Wardour
+Street good looks which in their youth had fascinated her.  She, together
+with anyone else who would lend him anything, and his losses at cards and
+on the turf (extraordinary how some men make a good thing out of losses!)
+were his whole means of subsistence; for James was now too old and
+nervous to approach, and Soames too formidably adamant.  It is not too
+much to say that Dartie had been living on hope for months.  He had never
+been fond of money for itself, had always despised the Forsytes with
+their investing habits, though careful to make such use of them as he
+could.  What he liked about money was what it bought--personal sensation.
+
+"No real sportsman cares for money," he would say, borrowing a 'pony' if
+it was no use trying for a 'monkey.'  There was something delicious about
+Montague Dartie.  He was, as George Forsyte said, a 'daisy.'
+
+The morning of the Handicap dawned clear and bright, the last day of
+September, and Dartie who had travelled to Newmarket the night before,
+arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an eminence to see his
+half of the filly take her final canter: If she won he would be a cool
+three thou. in pocket--a poor enough recompense for the sobriety and
+patience of these weeks of hope, while they had been nursing her for this
+race.  But he had not been able to afford more.  Should he 'lay it off'
+at the eight to one to which she had advanced?  This was his single
+thought while the larks sang above him, and the grassy downs smelled
+sweet, and the pretty filly passed, tossing her head and glowing like
+satin.
+
+After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid, and to 'lay it off'
+would reduce his winnings to some fifteen hundred--hardly enough to
+purchase a dancer out and out.  Even more potent was the itch in the
+blood of all the Darties for a real flutter.  And turning to George he
+said: "She's a clipper.  She'll win hands down; I shall go the whole
+hog."  George, who had laid off every penny, and a few besides, and stood
+to win, however it came out, grinned down on him from his bulky height,
+with the words: "So ho, my wild one!" for after a chequered
+apprenticeship weathered with the money of a deeply complaining Roger,
+his Forsyte blood was beginning to stand him in good stead in the
+profession of owner.
+
+There are moments of disillusionment in the lives of men from which the
+sensitive recorder shrinks.  Suffice it to say that the good thing fell
+down.  Sleeve-links finished in the ruck.  Dartie's shirt was lost.
+
+Between the passing of these things and the day when Soames turned his
+face towards Green Street, what had not happened!
+
+When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised
+self-control for months from religious motives, and remains unrewarded,
+he does not curse God and die, he curses God and lives, to the distress
+of his family.
+
+Winifred--a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable--who had borne the
+brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never really believed that
+he would do what he now did.  Like so many wives, she thought she knew
+the worst, but she had not yet known him in his forty-fifth year, when
+he, like other men, felt that it was now or never.  Paying on the 2nd of
+October a visit of inspection to her jewel case, she was horrified to
+observe that her woman's crown and glory was gone--the pearls which
+Montague had given her in '86, when Benedict was born, and which James
+had been compelled to pay for in the spring of '87, to save scandal.  She
+consulted her husband at once.  He 'pooh-poohed' the matter.  They would
+turn up!  Nor till she said sharply: "Very well, then, Monty, I shall go
+down to Scotland Yard myself," did he consent to take the matter in hand.
+Alas! that the steady and resolved continuity of design necessary to the
+accomplishment of sweeping operations should be liable to interruption by
+drink.  That night Dartie returned home without a care in the world or a
+particle of reticence.  Under normal conditions Winifred would merely
+have locked her door and let him sleep it off, but torturing suspense
+about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him.  Taking a small
+revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining table, he told her
+at once that he did not care a cursh whether she lived s'long as she was
+quiet; but he himself wash tired o' life. Winifred, holding onto the
+other side of the dining table, answered:
+
+"Don't be a clown, Monty.  Have you been to Scotland Yard?"
+
+Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the trigger
+several times.  It was not loaded.  Dropping it with an imprecation, he
+had muttered: "For shake o' the children," and sank into a chair.
+Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave him some soda water.  The
+liquor had a magical effect.  Life had illused him; Winifred had never
+'unshtood'm.'  If he hadn't the right to take the pearls he had given her
+himself, who had?  That Spanish filly had got'm.  If Winifred had any
+'jection he w'd cut--her--throat.  What was the matter with that?
+(Probably the first use of that celebrated phrase--so obscure are the
+origins of even the most classical language!)
+
+Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school, looked up at
+him, and said: "Spanish filly!  Do you mean that girl we saw dancing in
+the Pandemonium Ballet?  Well, you are a thief and a blackguard."  It had
+been the last straw on a sorely loaded consciousness; reaching up from
+his chair Dartie seized his wife's arm, and recalling the achievements of
+his boyhood, twisted it. Winifred endured the agony with tears in her
+eyes, but no murmur. Watching for a moment of weakness, she wrenched it
+free; then placing the dining table between them, said between her teeth:
+"You are the limit, Monty."  (Undoubtedly the inception of that phrase
+--so is English formed under the stress of circumstances.) Leaving Dartie
+with foam on his dark moustache she went upstairs, and, after locking her
+door and bathing her arm in hot water, lay awake all night, thinking of
+her pearls adorning the neck of another, and of the consideration her
+husband had presumably received therefor.
+
+The man of the world awoke with a sense of  being lost to that world, and
+a dim recollection  of having been called a 'limit.'  He sat for half  an
+hour in the dawn and the armchair where he  had slept--perhaps the
+unhappiest half-hour he  had ever spent, for even to a Dartie there is
+something tragic about an end.  And he knew that he  had reached it.
+Never again would he sleep in his dining-room and wake with the light
+filtering  through those curtains bought by Winifred at  Nickens and
+Jarveys with the money of James.  Never again eat a devilled kidney at
+that rose-wood table, after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath.  He took
+his note case from his dress coat pocket.  Four hundred pounds, in fives
+and tens--the remainder of the proceeds of his half of Sleeve-links, sold
+last night, cash down, to George Forsyte, who, having won over the race,
+had not conceived the sudden dislike to the animal which he himself now
+felt.  The ballet was going to Buenos Aires the day after to-morrow, and
+he was going too.  Full value for the pearls had not yet been received;
+he was only at the soup.
+
+He stole upstairs.  Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides, the
+water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed stealthily all he
+could.  It was hard to leave so many shining boots, but one must
+sacrifice something.  Then, carrying a valise in either hand, he stepped
+out onto the landing.  The house was very quiet--that house where he had
+begotten his four children.  It was a curious moment, this, outside the
+room of his wife, once admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him
+'the limit.'  He steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but
+the next door was harder to pass.  It was the room his daughters slept
+in.  Maud was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture
+came into Dartie's early morning eyes.  She was the most like him of the
+four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance.  Just coming
+out, a pretty thing!  He set down the two valises.  This almost formal
+abdication of fatherhood hurt him.  The morning light fell on a face
+which worked with real emotion.  Nothing so false as penitence moved him;
+but genuine paternal feeling, and that melancholy of 'never again.'  He
+moistened his lips; and complete irresolution for a moment paralysed his
+legs in their check trousers.  It was hard--hard to be thus compelled to
+leave his home!  "D---nit!" he muttered, "I never thought it would come
+to this."  Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning to get
+up.  And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on downstairs. His cheeks
+were wet, and the knowledge of that was comforting, as though it
+guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice.  He lingered a little in the
+rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some papers, a crush hat, a
+silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide.  Then, mixing himself a stiff
+whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette, he stood hesitating before a
+photograph of his two girls, in a silver frame.  It belonged to Winifred.
+'Never mind,' he thought; 'she can get another taken, and I can't!'  He
+slipped it into the valise.  Then, putting on his hat and overcoat, he
+took two others, his best malacca cane, an umbrella, and opened the front
+door. Closing it softly behind him, he walked out, burdened as he had
+never been in all his life, and made his way round the corner to wait
+there for an early cab to come by.
+
+Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age from
+the house which he had called his own.
+
+When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house, her
+first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude the
+reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful hours.  He
+had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman as likely as not.
+Disgusting!  Forced to a complete reticence before Imogen and the
+servants, and aware that her father's nerves would never stand the
+disclosure, she had been unable to refrain from going to Timothy's that
+afternoon, and pouring out the story of the pearls to Aunts Juley and
+Hester in utter confidence.  It was only on the following morning that
+she noticed the disappearance of that photograph.  What did it mean?
+Careful examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he
+had gone for good.  As that conclusion hardened she stood quite still in
+the middle of his dressing-room, with all the drawers pulled out, to try
+and realise what she was feeling.  By no means easy!  Though he was 'the
+limit' he was yet her property, and for the life of her she could not but
+feel the poorer.  To be widowed yet not widowed at forty-two; with four
+children; made conspicuous, an object of commiseration!  Gone to the arms
+of a Spanish Jade! Memories, feelings, which she had thought quite dead,
+revived within her, painful, sullen, tenacious.  Mechanically she closed
+drawer after drawer, went to her bed, lay on it, and buried her face in
+the pillows.  She did not cry.  What was the use of that? When she got
+off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only one thing could do
+her good, and that was to have Val home.  He--her eldest boy--who was to
+go to Oxford next month at James' expense, was at Littlehampton taking
+his final gallops with his trainer for Smalls, as he would have phrased
+it following his father's diction.  She caused a telegram to be sent to
+him.
+
+"I must see about his clothes," she said to Imogen; "I can't have him
+going up to Oxford all anyhow.  Those boys are so particular."
+
+"Val's got heaps of things," Imogen answered.
+
+"I know; but they want overhauling.  I hope he'll come."
+
+"He'll come like a shot, Mother.  But he'll probably skew his Exam."
+
+"I can't help that," said Winifred.  "I want him."
+
+With an innocent shrewd look at her mother's face, Imogen kept silence.
+It was father, of course!  Val did come 'like a shot' at six o'clock.
+
+Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young Publius
+Valerius Dartie.  A youth so named could hardly turn out otherwise.  When
+he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits, and the craving for
+distinction, had determined that her children should have names such as
+no others had ever had.  (It was a mercy--she felt now--that she had
+just not named Imogen Thisbe.) But it was to George Forsyte, always a
+wag, that Val's christening was due.  It so happened that Dartie, dining
+with him a week after the birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this
+aspiration of Winifred's.
+
+"Call him Cato," said George, "it'll be damned piquant!"  He had just won
+a tenner on a horse of that name.
+
+"Cato!" Dartie had replied--they were a little 'on' as the phrase was
+even in those days--"it's not a Christian name."
+
+"Halo you!" George called to a waiter in knee breeches.  "Bring me the
+Encyc'pedia Brit. from the Library, letter C."
+
+The waiter brought it.
+
+"Here you are!" said George, pointing with his cigar: "Cato Publius
+Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia.  That's what you want.  Publius Valerius
+is Christian enough."
+
+Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred.  She had been charmed.
+It was so 'chic.'  And Publius Valerius became the baby's name, though it
+afterwards transpired that they had got hold of the inferior Cato.  In
+1890, however, when little Publius was nearly ten, the word 'chic' went
+out of fashion, and sobriety came in; Winifred began to have doubts.
+They were confirmed by little Publius himself who returned from his first
+term at school complaining that life was a burden to him--they called him
+Pubby. Winifred--a woman of real decision--promptly changed his school
+and his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.
+
+At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth, light
+eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile, considerable knowledge
+of what he should not know, and no experience of what he ought to do.
+Few boys had more narrowly escaped being expelled--the engaging rascal.
+After kissing his mother and pinching Imogen, he ran upstairs three at a
+time, and came down four, dressed for dinner.  He was awfully sorry, but
+his 'trainer,' who had come up too, had asked him to dine at the Oxford
+and Cambridge; it wouldn't do to miss--the old chap would be hurt.
+Winifred let him go with an unhappy pride.  She had wanted him at home,
+but it was very nice to know that his tutor was so fond of him.  He went
+out with a wink at Imogen, saying: "I say, Mother, could I have two
+plover's eggs when I come in?--cook's got some.  They top up so jolly
+well.  Oh! and look here--have you any money?--I had to borrow a fiver
+from old Snobby."
+
+Winifred, looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:
+
+"My dear, you are naughty about money.  But you shouldn't pay him
+to-night, anyway; you're his guest.  How nice and slim he looked in his
+white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!"
+
+"Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I ought
+to stand the tickets; he's always hard up, you know."
+
+Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:
+
+"Well, perhaps you'd better pay him, but you mustn't stand the tickets
+too."
+
+Val pocketed the fiver.
+
+"If I do, I can't," he said.  "Good-night, Mum!"
+
+He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously, sniffing the
+air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into covert.  Jolly good biz!
+After that mouldy old slow hole down there!
+
+He found his 'tutor,' not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but at the
+Goat's Club.  This 'tutor' was a year older than himself, a good-looking
+youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a small mouth, an oval
+face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree, one of those young men who
+without effort establish moral ascendancy over their companions.  He had
+missed being expelled from school a year before Val, had spent that year
+at Oxford, and Val could almost see a halo round his head.  His name was
+Crum, and no one could get through money quicker.  It seemed to be his
+only aim in life--dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the Forsyte
+would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the value for that money
+was.
+
+They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the Club smoking cigars,
+with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into stalls at the
+Liberty.  For Val the sound of comic songs, the sight of lovely legs were
+fogged and interrupted by haunting fears that he would never equal Crum's
+quiet dandyism.  His idealism was roused; and when that is so, one is
+never quite at ease.  Surely he had too wide a mouth, not the best cut of
+waistcoat, no braid on his trousers, and his lavender gloves had no thin
+black stitchings down the back.  Besides, he laughed too much--Crum never
+laughed, he only smiled, with his regular dark brows raised a little so
+that they formed a gable over his just drooped lids.  No! he would never
+be Crum's equal.  All the same it was a jolly good show, and Cynthia Dark
+simply ripping.  Between the acts Crum regaled him with particulars of
+Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge became Val's that, if he
+liked, Crum could go behind.  He simply longed to say: "I say, take me!"
+but dared not, because of his deficiencies; and this made the last act or
+two almost miserable. On coming out Crum said: "It's half an hour before
+they close; let's go on to the Pandemonium."  They took a hansom to
+travel the hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because
+they were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade.  It was in these
+little things, this utter negligence of money that Crum had such engaging
+polish.  The ballet was on its last legs and night, and the traffic of
+the Promenade was suffering for the moment.  Men and women were crowded
+in three rows against the barrier.  The whirl and dazzle on the stage,
+the half dark, the mingled tobacco fumes and women's scent, all that
+curious lure to promiscuity which belongs to Promenades, began to free
+young Val from his idealism. He looked admiringly in a young woman's
+face, saw she was not young, and quickly looked away.  Shades of Cynthia
+Dark!  The young woman's arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent
+of musk and mignonette.  Val looked round the corner of his lashes.
+Perhaps she was young, after all.  Her foot trod on his; she begged his
+pardon.  He said:
+
+"Not at all; jolly good ballet, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm tired of it; aren't you?"
+
+Young Val smiled--his wide, rather charming smile.  Beyond that he did
+not go--not yet convinced.  The Forsyte in him stood out for greater
+certainty.  And on the stage the ballet whirled its kaleidoscope of
+snow-white, salmon-pink, and emerald-green and violet and seemed suddenly
+to freeze into a stilly spangled pyramid.  Applause broke out, and it was
+over!  Maroon curtains had cut it off.  The semi-circle of men and women
+round the barrier broke up, the young woman's arm pressed his.  A little
+way off disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation;
+Val stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking towards it.
+Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm.  The one in the centre
+wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a dark moustache; he reeled a
+little as he walked.  Crum's voice said slow and level: "Look at that
+bounder, he's screwed!"  Val turned to look.  The 'bounder' had
+disengaged his arm, and was pointing straight at them.  Crum's voice,
+level as ever, said:
+
+"He seems to know you!"  The 'bounder' spoke:
+
+"H'llo!" he said.  "You f'llows, look!  There's my young rascal of a
+son!"
+
+Val saw.  It was his father!  He could have sunk into the crimson carpet.
+It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his father was
+'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by heavenly
+revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true.  Yes, his father
+looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink carnation, and
+his square, self-assertive walk.  And without a word he ducked behind the
+young woman and slipped out of the Promenade. He heard the word, "Val!"
+behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted steps past the 'chuckersout,' into
+the Square.
+
+To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience a
+young man can go through.  It seemed to Val, hurrying away, that his
+career had ended before it had begun.  How could he go up to Oxford now
+amongst all those chaps, those splendid friends of Crum's, who would know
+that his father was a 'bounder'!  And suddenly he hated Crum.  Who the
+devil was Crum, to say that?  If Crum had been beside him at that moment,
+he would certainly have been jostled off the pavement.  His own
+father--his own!  A choke came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands
+down deep into his overcoat pockets.  Damn Crum!  He conceived the wild
+idea of running back and fending his father, taking him by the arm and
+walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up at once and
+pursued his way down Piccadilly.  A young woman planted herself before
+him.  "Not so angry, darling!"  He shied, dodged her, and suddenly became
+quite cool.  If Crum ever said a word, he would jolly well punch his
+head, and there would be an end of it.  He walked a hundred yards or
+more, contented with that thought, then lost its comfort utterly.  It
+wasn't simple like that!  He remembered how, at school, when some parent
+came down who did not pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow
+afterwards.  It was one of those things nothing could remove.  Why had
+his mother married his father, if he was a 'bounder'?  It was bitterly
+unfair--jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a 'bounder' for father.
+The worst of it was that now Crum had spoken the word, he realised that
+he had long known subconsciously that his father was not 'the clean
+potato.'  It was the beastliest thing that had ever happened to
+him--beastliest thing that had ever happened to any fellow! And,
+down-hearted as he had never yet been, he came to Green Street, and let
+himself in with a smuggled latch-key.  In the dining-room his plover's
+eggs were set invitingly, with some cut bread and butter, and a little
+whisky at the bottom of a decanter--just enough, as Winifred had
+thought, for him to feel himself a man.  It made him sick to look at
+them, and he went upstairs.
+
+Winifred heard him pass, and thought: 'The dear boy's in.  Thank
+goodness!  If he takes after his father I don't know what I shall do!
+But he won't he's like me.  Dear Val!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS
+
+When Soames entered his sister's little Louis Quinze drawing-room, with
+its small balcony, always flowered with hanging geraniums in the summer,
+and now with pots of Lilium Auratum, he was struck by the immutability of
+human affairs.  It looked just the same as on his first visit to the
+newly married Darties twenty-one years ago. He had chosen the furniture
+himself, and so completely that no subsequent purchase had ever been able
+to change the room's atmosphere.  Yes, he had founded his sister well,
+and she had wanted it.  Indeed, it said a great deal for Winifred that
+after all this time with Dartie she remained well-founded.  From the
+first Soames had nosed out Dartie's nature from underneath the
+plausibility, savoir faire, and good looks which had dazzled Winifred,
+her mother, and even James, to the extent of permitting the fellow to
+marry his daughter without bringing anything but shares of no value into
+settlement.
+
+Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at her Buhl
+bureau with a letter in her hand.  She rose and came towards him.  Tall
+as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well tailored, something in her
+face disturbed Soames.  She crumpled the letter in her hand, but seemed
+to change her mind and held it out to him.  He was her lawyer as well as
+her brother.
+
+Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:
+
+'You will not get chance to insult in my own again.  I am leaving country
+to-morrow.  It's played out.  I'm tired of being insulted by you.  You've
+brought on yourself.  No self-respecting man can stand it.  I shall not
+ask you for anything again.  Good-bye.  I took the photograph of the two
+girls.  Give them my love.  I don't care what your family say.  It's all
+their doing.  I'm going to live new life.
+'M.D.'
+
+This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry.  He looked
+at Winifred--the splotch had clearly come from her; and he checked the
+words: 'Good riddance!'  Then it occurred to him that with this letter
+she was entering that very state which he himself so earnestly desired to
+quit--the state of a Forsyte who was not divorced.
+
+Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a little
+gold-topped bottle.  A dull commiseration, together with a vague sense of
+injury, crept about Soames' heart.  He had come to her to talk of his own
+position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the same position,
+wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy from him.  It was
+always like that!  Nobody ever seemed to think that he had troubles and
+interests of his own.  He folded up the letter with the splotch inside,
+and said:
+
+"What's it all about, now?"
+
+Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.
+
+"Do you think he's really gone, Soames?  You see the state he was in when
+he wrote that."
+
+Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by pretending
+that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:
+
+"I shouldn't think so.  I might find out at his Club."
+
+"If George is there," said Winifred, "he would know."
+
+"George?" said Soames; "I saw him at his father's funeral."
+
+"Then he's sure to be there."
+
+Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister's acumen, said grudgingly:
+"Well, I'll go round.  Have you said anything in Park Lane?"
+
+"I've told Emily," returned Winifred, who retained that 'chic' way of
+describing her mother.  "Father would have a fit."
+
+Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James.  With
+another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his sister's exact
+position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly.  The evening was drawing
+in--a touch of chill in the October haze.  He walked quickly, with his
+close and concentrated air.  He must get through, for he wished to dine
+in Soho.  On hearing from the hall porter at the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie
+had not been in to-day, he looked at the trusty fellow and decided only
+to ask if Mr. George Forsyte was in the Club.  He was.  Soames, who
+always looked askance at his cousin George, as one inclined to jest at
+his expense, followed the pageboy, slightly reassured by the thought that
+George had just lost his father.  He must have come in for about thirty
+thousand, besides what he had under that settlement of Roger's, which had
+avoided death duty.  He found George in a bow-window, staring out across
+a half-eaten plate of muffins.  His tall, bulky, black-clothed figure
+loomed almost threatening, though preserving still the supernatural
+neatness of the racing man.  With a faint grin on his fleshy face, he
+said:
+
+"Hallo, Soames!  Have a muffin?"
+
+"No, thanks," murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the desire to
+say something suitable and sympathetic, added:
+
+"How's your mother?"
+
+"Thanks," said George; "so-so.  Haven't seen you for ages.  You never go
+racing.  How's the City?"
+
+Soames, scenting the approach of a jest, closed up, and answered:
+
+"I wanted to ask you about Dartie.  I hear he's...."
+
+"Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola.  Good for
+Winifred and the little Darties.  He's a treat."
+
+Soames nodded.  Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie made
+them kin.
+
+"Uncle James'll sleep in his bed now," resumed George; "I suppose he's
+had a lot off you, too."
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"Ah! You saw him further," said George amicably.  "He's a real rouser.
+Young Val will want a bit of looking after.  I was always sorry for
+Winifred.  She's a plucky woman."
+
+Again Soames nodded.  "I must be getting back to her," he said; "she just
+wanted to know for certain.  We may have to take steps. I suppose there's
+no mistake?"
+
+"It's quite O.K.," said George--it was he who invented so many of those
+quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources. "He was drunk
+as a lord last night; but he went off all right this morning.  His ship's
+the Tuscarora;" and, fishing out a card, he read mockingly:
+
+"'Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.'  I should hurry up
+with the steps, if I were you.  He fairly fed me up last night."
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "but it's not always easy."  Then, conscious from
+George's eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own affair, he got
+up, and held out his hand.  George rose too.
+
+"Remember me to Winifred....  You'll enter her for the Divorce Stakes
+straight off if you ask me."
+
+Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway.  George had
+seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked big and lonely
+in those black clothes.  Soames had never known him so subdued.  'I
+suppose he feels it in a way,' he thought.  'They must have about fifty
+thousand each, all told.  They ought to keep the estate together.  If
+there's a war, house property will go down. Uncle Roger was a good judge,
+though.'  And the face of Annette rose before him in the darkening
+street; her brown hair and her blue eyes with their dark lashes, her
+fresh lips and cheeks, dewy and blooming in spite of London, her perfect
+French figure.  'Take steps!' he thought.  Re-entering Winifred's house
+he encountered Val, and they went in together.  An idea had occurred to
+Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to
+go down and see him at Robin Hill.  Robin Hill!  The odd--the very odd
+feeling those words brought back!  Robin Hill--the house Bosinney had
+built for him and Irene--the house they had never lived in--the fatal
+house!  And Jolyon lived there now!  H'm!  And suddenly he thought: 'They
+say he's got a boy at Oxford!  Why not take young Val down and introduce
+them!  It's an excuse!  Less bald--very much less bald!' So, as they went
+upstairs, he said to Val:
+
+"You've got a cousin at Oxford; you've never met him.  I should like to
+take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and introduce you.
+You'll find it useful."
+
+Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames clinched it.
+
+"I'll call for you after lunch.  It's in the country--not far; you'll
+enjoy it."
+
+On the threshold of the drawing-room he recalled with an effort that the
+steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment, not himself.
+
+Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.
+
+"It's quite true," he said; "he's gone to Buenos Aires, started this
+morning--we'd better have him shadowed when he lands.  I'll cable at
+once.  Otherwise we may have a lot of expense.  The sooner these things
+are done the better.  I'm always regretting that I didn't..." he stopped,
+and looked sidelong at the silent Winifred. "By the way," he went on,
+"can you prove cruelty?"
+
+Winifred said in a dull voice:
+
+"I don't know.  What is cruelty?"
+
+"Well, has he struck you, or anything?"
+
+Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.
+
+"He twisted my arm.  Or would pointing a pistol count?  Or being too
+drunk to undress himself, or--No--I can't bring in the children."
+
+"No," said Soames; "no!  I wonder!  Of course, there's legal
+separation--we can get that.  But separation!  Um!"
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Winifred desolately.
+
+"That he can't touch you, or you him; you're both of you married and
+unmarried."  And again he grunted.  What was it, in fact, but his own
+accursed position, legalised!  No, he would not put her into that!
+
+"It must be divorce," he said decisively; "failing cruelty, there's
+desertion.  There's a way of shortening the two years, now.  We get the
+Court to give us restitution of conjugal rights.  Then if he doesn't
+obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six months' time. Of course you
+don't want him back.  But they won't know that. Still, there's the risk
+that he might come.  I'd rather try cruelty."
+
+Winifred shook her head.  "It's so beastly."
+
+"Well," Soames murmured, "perhaps there isn't much risk so long as he's
+infatuated and got money.  Don't say anything to anybody, and don't pay
+any of his debts."
+
+Winifred sighed.  In spite of all she had been through, the sense of loss
+was heavy on her.  And this idea of not paying his debts any more brought
+it home to her as nothing else yet had.  Some richness seemed to have
+gone out of life.  Without her husband, without her pearls, without that
+intimate sense that she made a brave show above the domestic whirlpool,
+she would now have to face the world.  She felt bereaved indeed.
+
+And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put more than
+his usual warmth.
+
+"I have to go down to Robin Hill to-morrow," he said, "to see young
+Jolyon on business.  He's got a boy at Oxford.  I'd like to take Val with
+me and introduce him.  Come down to 'The Shelter' for the week-end and
+bring the children.  Oh! by the way, no, that won't do; I've got some
+other people coming."  So saying, he left her and turned towards Soho.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOHO
+
+Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London, Soho is
+perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit.  'So-ho, my wild one!'
+George would have said if he had seen his cousin going there.  Untidy,
+full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians, tomatoes, restaurants,
+organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people looking out of upper
+windows, it dwells remote from the British Body Politic.  Yet has it
+haphazard proprietary instincts of its own, and a certain possessive
+prosperity which keeps its rents up when those of other quarters go down.
+For long years Soames' acquaintanceship with Soho had been confined to
+its Western bastion, Wardour Street.  Many bargains had he picked up
+there. Even during those seven years at Brighton after Bosinney's death
+and Irene's flight, he had bought treasures there sometimes, though he
+had no place to put them; for when the conviction that his wife had gone
+for good at last became firm within him, he had caused a board to be put
+up in Montpellier Square:
+
+                     FOR SALE
+        THE LEASE OF THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE
+
+        Enquire of Messrs. Lesson and Tukes,
+             Court Street, Belgravia.
+
+It had sold within a week--that desirable residence, in the shadow of
+whose perfection a man and a woman had eaten their hearts out.
+
+Of a misty January evening, just before the board was taken down, Soames
+had gone there once more, and stood against the Square railings, looking
+at its unlighted windows, chewing the cud of possessive memories which
+had turned so bitter in the mouth.  Why had she never loved him?  Why?
+She had been given all she had wanted, and in return had given him, for
+three long years, all he had wanted--except, indeed, her heart.  He had
+uttered a little involuntary groan, and a passing policeman had glanced
+suspiciously at him who no longer possessed the right to enter that green
+door with the carved brass knocker beneath the board 'For Sale!'  A
+choking sensation had attacked his throat, and he had hurried away into
+the mist.  That evening he had gone to Brighton to live....
+
+Approaching Malta Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne, where
+Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her accounts, Soames
+thought with wonder of those seven years at Brighton.  How had he managed
+to go on so long in that town devoid of the scent of sweetpeas, where he
+had not even space to put his treasures?  True, those had been years with
+no time at all for looking at them--years of almost passionate
+money-making, during which Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte had become
+solicitors to more limited Companies than they could properly attend to.
+Up to the City of a morning in a Pullman car, down from the City of an
+evening in a Pullman car. Law papers again after dinner, then the sleep
+of the tired, and up again next morning.  Saturday to Monday was spent at
+his Club in town--curious reversal of customary procedure, based on the
+deep and careful instinct that while working so hard he needed sea air to
+and from the station twice a day, and while resting must indulge his
+domestic affections.  The Sunday visit to his family in Park Lane, to
+Timothy's, and to Green Street; the occasional visits elsewhere had
+seemed to him as necessary to health as sea air on weekdays.  Even since
+his migration to Mapledurham he had maintained those habits until--he had
+known Annette.
+
+Whether Annette had produced the revolution in his outlook, or that
+outlook had produced Annette, he knew no more than we know where a circle
+begins.  It was intricate and deeply involved with the growing
+consciousness that property without anyone to leave it to is the negation
+of true Forsyteism.  To have an heir, some continuance of self, who would
+begin where he left off--ensure, in fact, that he would not leave
+off--had quite obsessed him for the last year and more.  After buying a
+bit of Wedgwood one evening in April, he had dropped into Malta Street to
+look at a house of his father's which had been turned into a
+restaurant--a risky proceeding, and one not quite in accordance with the
+terms of the lease.  He had stared for a little at the outside  painted a
+good cream colour, with two peacock-blue tubs containing little bay-trees
+in a recessed doorway--and at the words 'Restaurant Bretagne' above them
+in gold letters, rather favourably impressed.  Entering, he had noticed
+that several people were already seated at little round green tables with
+little pots of fresh flowers on them and Brittany-ware plates, and had
+asked of a trim waitress to see the proprietor.  They had shown him into
+a back room, where a girl was sitting at a simple bureau covered with
+papers, and a small round, table was laid for two.  The impression of
+cleanliness, order, and good taste was confirmed when the girl got up,
+saying, "You wish to see Maman, Monsieur?" in a broken accent.
+
+"Yes," Soames had answered, "I represent your landlord; in fact, I'm his
+son."
+
+"Won't you sit down, sir, please?  Tell Maman to come to this gentleman."
+
+He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed business
+instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was remarkably pretty--so
+remarkably pretty that his eyes found a difficulty in leaving her face.
+When she moved to put a chair for him, she swayed in a curious subtle
+way, as if she had been put together by someone with a special secret
+skill; and her face and neck, which was a little bared, looked as fresh
+as if they had been sprayed with dew.  Probably at this moment Soames
+decided that the lease had not been violated; though to himself and his
+father he based the decision on the efficiency of those illicit
+adaptations in the building, on the signs of prosperity, and the obvious
+business capacity of Madame Lamotte.  He did not, however, neglect to
+leave certain matters to future consideration, which had necessitated
+further visits, so that the little back room had become quite accustomed
+to his spare, not unsolid, but unobtrusive figure, and his pale, chinny
+face with clipped moustache and dark hair not yet grizzling at the sides.
+
+"Un Monsieur tres distingue," Madame Lamotte found him; and presently,
+"Tres amical, tres gentil," watching his eyes upon her daughter.
+
+She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired
+Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect
+confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their knowledge
+of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank balances.
+
+After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits
+ceased--without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like all
+Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a born
+empiricist.  But it was this change in his mode of life which had
+gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to alter his
+condition from that of the unmarried married man to that of the married
+man remarried.
+
+Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899, he
+bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of the Dreyfus
+case--a question which he had always found useful in making closer
+acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her daughter, who were Catholic
+and anti-Dreyfusard.
+
+Scanning those columns, Soames found nothing French, but noticed a
+general fall on the Stock Exchange and an ominous leader about the
+Transvaal.  He entered, thinking: 'War's a certainty.  I shall sell my
+consols.'  Not that he had many, personally, the rate of interest was too
+wretched; but he should advise his Companies--consols would assuredly go
+down.  A look, as he passed the doorways of the restaurant, assured him
+that business was good as ever, and this, which in April would have
+pleased him, now gave him a certain uneasiness.  If the steps which he
+had to take ended in his marrying Annette, he would rather see her mother
+safely back in France, a move to which the prosperity of the Restaurant
+Bretagne might become an obstacle.  He would have to buy them out, of
+course, for French people only came to England to make money; and it
+would mean a higher price.  And then that peculiar sweet sensation at the
+back of his throat, and a slight thumping about the heart, which he
+always experienced at the door of the little room, prevented his thinking
+how much it would cost.
+
+Going in, he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing through
+the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her hands up to her
+hair.  It was the attitude in which of all others he admired her--so
+beautifully straight and rounded and supple.  And he said:
+
+"I just came in to talk to your mother about pulling down that partition.
+No, don't call her."
+
+"Monsieur will have supper with us?  It will be ready in ten minutes."
+Soames, who still held her hand, was overcome by an impulse which
+surprised him.
+
+"You look so pretty to-night," he said, "so very pretty.  Do you know how
+pretty you look, Annette?"
+
+Annette withdrew her hand, and blushed.  "Monsieur is very good."
+
+"Not a bit good," said Soames, and sat down gloomily.
+
+Annette made a little expressive gesture with her hands; a smile was
+crinkling her red lips untouched by salve.
+
+And, looking at those lips, Soames said:
+
+"Are you happy over here, or do you want to go back to France?"
+
+"Oh, I like London.  Paris, of course.  But London is better than
+Orleans, and the English country is so beautiful.  I have been to
+Richmond last Sunday."
+
+Soames went through a moment of calculating struggle.  Mapledurham! Dared
+he?  After all, dared he go so far as that, and show her what there was
+to look forward to!  Still!  Down there one could say things.  In this
+room it was impossible.
+
+"I want you and your mother," he said suddenly, "to come for the
+afternoon next Sunday.  My house is on the river, it's not too late in
+this weather; and I can show you some good pictures.  What do you say?"
+
+Annette clasped her hands.
+
+"It will be lovelee.  The river is so beautiful"
+
+"That's understood, then.  I'll ask Madame."
+
+He need say no more to her this evening, and risk giving himself away.
+But had he not already said too much?  Did one ask restaurant proprietors
+with pretty daughters down to one's country house without design?  Madame
+Lamotte would see, if Annette didn't. Well! there was not much that
+Madame did not see.  Besides, this was the second time he had stayed to
+supper with them; he owed them hospitality.
+
+Walking home towards Park Lane--for he was staying at his father's--with
+the impression of Annette's soft clever hand within his own, his thoughts
+were pleasant, slightly sensual, rather puzzled.  Take steps!  What
+steps?  How?  Dirty linen washed in public?  Pah! With his reputation for
+sagacity, for far-sightedness and the clever extrication of others, he,
+who stood for proprietary interests, to become the plaything of that Law
+of which he was a pillar!  There was something revolting in the thought!
+Winifred's affair was bad enough!  To have a double dose of publicity in
+the family!  Would not a liaison be better than that--a liaison, and a
+son he could adopt?  But dark, solid, watchful, Madame Lamotte blocked
+the avenue of that vision.  No! that would not work.  It was not as if
+Annette could have a real passion for him; one could not expect that at
+his age.  If her mother wished, if the worldly advantage were manifestly
+great--perhaps!  If not, refusal would be certain.  Besides, he thought:
+'I'm not a villain.  I don't want to hurt her; and I don't want anything
+underhand.  But I do want her, and I want a son!  There's nothing for it
+but divorce--somehow--anyhow--divorce!'  Under the shadow of the
+plane-trees, in the lamplight, he passed slowly along the railings of the
+Green Park. Mist clung there among the bluish tree shapes, beyond range
+of the lamps.  How many hundred times he had walked past those trees from
+his father's house in Park Lane, when he was quite a young man; or from
+his own house in Montpellier Square in those four years of married life!
+And, to-night, making up his mind to free himself if he could of that
+long useless marriage tie, he took a fancy to walk on, in at Hyde Park
+Corner, out at Knightsbridge Gate, just as he used to when going home to
+Irene in the old days.  What could she be like now?--how had she passed
+the years since he last saw her, twelve years in all, seven already since
+Uncle Jolyon left her that money?  Was she still beautiful?  Would he
+know her if he saw her? 'I've not changed much,' he thought; 'I expect
+she has.  She made me suffer.'  He remembered suddenly one night, the
+first on which he went out to dinner alone--an old Malburian dinner--the
+first year of their marriage.  With what eagerness he had hurried back;
+and, entering softly as a cat, had heard her playing.  Opening the
+drawing-room door noiselessly, he had stood watching the expression on
+her face, different from any he knew, so much more open, so confiding, as
+though to her music she was giving a heart he had never seen.  And he
+remembered how she stopped and looked round, how her face changed back to
+that which he did know, and what an icy shiver had gone through him, for
+all that the next moment he was fondling her shoulders.  Yes, she had
+made him suffer! Divorce!  It seemed ridiculous, after all these years of
+utter separation!  But it would have to be.  No other way!  'The
+question,' he thought with sudden realism, 'is--which of us?  She or me?
+She deserted me.  She ought to pay for it.  There'll be someone, I
+suppose.'  Involuntarily he uttered a little snarling sound, and,
+turning, made his way back to Park Lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JAMES SEES VISIONS
+
+The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly, detained
+Soames on the inner mat.
+
+"The master's poorly, sir," he murmured.  "He wouldn't go to bed till you
+came in.  He's still in the diningroom."
+
+Soames responded in the hushed tone to which the house was now
+accustomed.
+
+"What's the matter with him, Warmson?"
+
+"Nervous, sir, I think.  Might be the funeral; might be Mrs. Dartie's
+comin' round this afternoon.  I think he overheard something.  I've took
+him in a negus.  The mistress has just gone up."
+
+Soames hung his hat on a mahogany stag's-horn.
+
+"All right, Warmson, you can go to bed; I'll take him up myself." And he
+passed into the dining-room.
+
+James was sitting before the fire, in a big armchair, with a camel-hair
+shawl, very light and warm, over his frock-coated shoulders, on to which
+his long white whiskers drooped.  His white hair, still fairly thick,
+glistened in the lamplight; a little moisture from his fixed, light-grey
+eyes stained the cheeks, still quite well coloured, and the long deep
+furrows running to the corners of the clean-shaven lips, which moved as
+if mumbling thoughts.  His long legs, thin as a crow's, in shepherd's
+plaid trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a
+spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and glistening
+tapered nails.  Beside him, on a low stool, stood a half-finished glass
+of negus, bedewed with beads of heat.  There he had been sitting, with
+intervals for meals, all day.  At eighty-eight he was still organically
+sound, but suffering terribly from the thought that no one ever told him
+anything.  It is, indeed, doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was
+being buried that day, for Emily had kept it from him.  She was always
+keeping things from him.  Emily was only seventy!  James had a grudge
+against his wife's youth.  He felt sometimes that he would never have
+married her if he had known that she would have so many years before her,
+when he had so few.  It was not natural.  She would live fifteen or
+twenty years after he was gone, and might spend a lot of money; she had
+always had extravagant tastes.  For all he knew she might want to buy one
+of these motor-cars.  Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and all the young
+people--they all rode those bicycles now and went off Goodness knew
+where.  And now Roger was gone.  He didn't know--couldn't tell!  The
+family was breaking up.  Soames would know how much his uncle had left.
+Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames' uncle not as his own brother.
+Soames!  It was more and more the one solid spot in a vanishing world.
+Soames was careful; he was a warm man; but he had no one to leave his
+money to.  There it was! He didn't know!  And there was that fellow
+Chamberlain!  For James' political principles had been fixed between '70
+and '85 when 'that rascally Radical' had been the chief thorn in the side
+of property and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion;
+he would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he had
+done with it.  A stormy petrel of a chap!  Where was Soames? He had gone
+to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep from him.  He knew
+that perfectly well; he had seen his son's trousers.  Roger! Roger in his
+coffin!  He remembered how, when they came up from school together from
+the West, on the box seat of the old Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got
+into the 'boot' and gone to sleep.  James uttered a thin cackle.  A funny
+fellow--Roger--an original!  He didn't know!  Younger than himself, and
+in his coffin!  The family was breaking up.  There was Val going to the
+university; he never came to see him now.  He would cost a pretty penny
+up there.  It was an extravagant age.  And all the pretty pennies that
+his four grandchildren would cost him danced before James' eyes.  He did
+not grudge them the money, but he grudged terribly the risk which the
+spending of that money might bring on them; he grudged the diminution of
+security.  And now that Cicely had married, she might be having children
+too.  He didn't know--couldn't tell!  Nobody thought of anything but
+spending money in these days, and racing about, and having what they
+called 'a good time.'  A motor-car went past the window.  Ugly great
+lumbering thing, making all that racket!  But there it was, the country
+rattling to the dogs!  People in such a hurry that they couldn't even
+care for style--a neat turnout like his barouche and bays was worth all
+those new-fangled things.  And consols at 116!  There must be a lot of
+money in the country.  And now there was this old Kruger!  They had tried
+to keep old Kruger from him.  But he knew better; there would be a pretty
+kettle of fish out there!  He had known how it would be when that fellow
+Gladstone--dead now, thank God! made such a mess of it after that
+dreadful business at Majuba. He shouldn't wonder if the Empire split up
+and went to pot.  And this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a
+full quarter of an hour with qualms of the most serious character.  He
+had eaten a poor lunch because of them.  But it was after lunch that the
+real disaster to his nerves occurred.  He had been dozing when he became
+aware of voices--low voices.  Ah! they never told him anything!
+Winifred's and her mother's.  "Monty!"  That fellow Dartie--always that
+fellow Dartie!  The voices had receded; and James had been left alone,
+with his ears standing up like a hare's, and fear creeping about his
+inwards.  Why did they leave him alone?  Why didn't they come and tell
+him?  And an awful thought, which through long years had haunted
+him, concreted again swiftly in his brain. Dartie had gone
+bankrupt--fraudulently bankrupt, and to save Winifred and the children,
+he--James--would have to pay!  Could he--could Soames turn him into a
+limited company?  No, he couldn't! There it was!  With every minute
+before Emily came back the spectre fiercened.  Why, it might be forgery!
+With eyes fixed on the doubted Turner in the centre of the wall, James
+suffered tortures. He saw Dartie in the dock, his grandchildren in the
+gutter, and himself in bed.  He saw the doubted Turner being sold at
+Jobson's, and all the majestic edifice of property in rags.  He saw in
+fancy Winifred unfashionably dressed, and heard in fancy Emily's voice
+saying: "Now, don't fuss, James!"  She was always saying: "Don't fuss!"
+She had no nerves; he ought never to have married a woman eighteen years
+younger than himself.  Then Emily's real voice said:
+
+"Have you had a nice nap, James?"
+
+Nap!  He was in torment, and she asked him that!
+
+"What's this about Dartie?" he said, and his eyes glared at her.
+
+Emily's self-possession never deserted her.
+
+"What have you been hearing?" she asked blandly.
+
+"What's this about Dartie?" repeated James.  "He's gone bankrupt."
+
+"Fiddle!"
+
+James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his stork-like
+figure.
+
+"You never tell me anything," he said; "he's gone bankrupt."
+
+The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that mattered at
+the moment.
+
+"He has not," she answered firmly.  "He's gone to Buenos Aires."
+
+If she had said "He's gone to Mars" she could not have dealt James a more
+stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in British securities,
+could as little grasp one place as the other.
+
+"What's he gone there for?" he said.  "He's got no money.  What did he
+take?"
+
+Agitated within by Winifred's news, and goaded by the constant
+reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:
+
+"He took Winifred's pearls and a dancer."
+
+"What!" said James, and sat down.
+
+His sudden collapse alarmed her, and smoothing his forehead, she said:
+
+"Now, don't fuss, James!"
+
+A dusky red had spread over James' cheeks and forehead.
+
+"I paid for them," he said tremblingly; "he's a thief!  I--I knew how it
+would be.  He'll be the death of me; he ...."  Words failed him and he
+sat quite still.  Emily, who thought she knew him so well, was alarmed,
+and went towards the sideboard where she kept some sal volatile.  She
+could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit working in that thin,
+tremulous shape against the extravagance of the emotion called up by this
+outrage on Forsyte principles--the Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying:
+'You mustn't get into a fantod, it'll never do.  You won't digest your
+lunch.  You'll have a fit!'  All unseen by her, it was doing better work
+in James than sal volatile.
+
+"Drink this," she said.
+
+James waved it aside.
+
+"What was Winifred about," he said, "to let him take her pearls?" Emily
+perceived the crisis past.
+
+"She can have mine," she said comfortably.  "I never wear them. She'd
+better get a divorce."
+
+"There you go!" said James.  "Divorce!  We've never had a divorce in the
+family.  Where's Soames?"
+
+"He'll be in directly."
+
+"No, he won't," said James, almost fiercely; "he's at the funeral. You
+think I know nothing."
+
+"Well," said Emily with calm, "you shouldn't get into such fusses when we
+tell you things."  And plumping up his cushions, and putting the sal
+volatile beside him, she left the room.
+
+But James sat there seeing visions--of Winifred in the Divorce Court, and
+the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on Roger's coffin; of
+Val taking after his father; of the pearls he had paid for and would
+never see again; of money back at four per cent., and the country going
+to the dogs; and, as the afternoon wore into evening, and tea-time
+passed, and dinnertime, those visions became more and more mixed and
+menacing--of being told nothing, till he had nothing left of all his
+wealth, and they told him nothing of it.  Where was Soames?  Why didn't
+he come in?... His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it to
+drink, and saw his son standing there looking at him.  A little sigh of
+relief escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he said:
+
+"There you are!  Dartie's gone to Buenos Aires."
+
+Soames nodded.  "That's all right," he said; "good riddance."
+
+A wave of assuagement passed over James' brain.  Soames knew. Soames was
+the only one of them all who had sense.  Why couldn't he come and live at
+home?  He had no son of his own.  And he said plaintively:
+
+"At my age I get nervous.  I wish you were more at home, my boy."
+
+Again Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no
+understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident touched his
+father's shoulder.
+
+"They sent their love to you at Timothy's," he said.  "It went off all
+right.  I've been to see Winifred.  I'm going to take steps." And he
+thought: 'Yes, and you mustn't hear of them.'
+
+James looked up; his long white whiskers quivered, his thin throat
+between the points of his collar looked very gristly and naked.
+
+"I've been very poorly all day," he said; "they never tell me anything."
+
+Soames' heart twitched.
+
+"Well, it's all right.  There's nothing to worry about.  Will you come up
+now?" and he put his hand under his father's arm.
+
+James obediently and tremulously raised himself, and together they went
+slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the firelight, and out
+to the stairs.  Very slowly they ascended.
+
+"Good-night, my boy," said James at his bedroom door.
+
+"Good-night, father," answered Soames.  His hand stroked down the sleeve
+beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it, so thin was
+the arm.  And, turning away from the light in the opening doorway, he
+went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.
+
+'I want a son,' he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed; 'I want a
+son.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME
+
+Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper lawn at
+Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled under it and
+said to Soames: "Forsyte, I've found the very place for your house."
+Since then Swithin had dreamed, and old Jolyon died, beneath its
+branches.  And now, close to the swing, no-longer-young Jolyon often
+painted there.  Of all spots in the world it was perhaps the most sacred
+to him, for he had loved his father.
+
+Contemplating its great girth--crinkled and a little mossed, but not yet
+hollow--he would speculate on the passage of time.  That tree had seen,
+perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he shouldn't wonder, from
+the days of Elizabeth at least.  His own fifty years were as nothing to
+its wood.  When the house behind it, which he now owned, was three
+hundred years of age instead of twelve, that tree might still be standing
+there, vast and hollow--for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it
+down?  A Forsyte might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it
+jealously. And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like coated
+with such age.  Wistaria was already about its walls--the new look had
+gone.  Would it hold its own and keep the dignity Bosinney had bestowed
+on it, or would the giant London have lapped it round and made it into an
+asylum in the midst of a jerry-built wilderness? Often, within and
+without of it, he was persuaded that Bosinney had been moved by the
+spirit when he built.  He had put his heart into that house, indeed!  It
+might even become one of the 'homes of England'--a rare achievement for a
+house in these degenerate days of building.  And the aesthetic spirit,
+moving hand in hand with his Forsyte sense of possessive continuity,
+dwelt with pride and pleasure on his ownership thereof.  There was the
+smack of reverence and ancestor-worship (if only for one ancestor) in his
+desire to hand this house down to his son and his son's son.  His father
+had loved the house, had loved the view, the grounds, that tree; his last
+years had been happy there, and no one had lived there before him.  These
+last eleven years at Robin Hill had formed in Jolyon's life as a painter,
+the important period of success.  He was now in the very van of
+water-colour art, hanging on the line everywhere.  His drawings fetched
+high prices.  Specialising in that one medium with the tenacity of his
+breed, he had 'arrived'--rather late, but not too late for a member of
+the family which made a point of living for ever.  His art had really
+deepened and improved.  In conformity with his position he had grown a
+short fair beard, which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his
+Forsyte chin; his brown face had lost the warped expression of his
+ostracised period--he looked, if anything, younger.  The loss of his wife
+in 1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which turn out in the
+end for the good of all.  He had, indeed, loved her to the last, for his
+was an affectionate spirit, but she had become increasingly difficult:
+jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous even of her own little
+daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint that he could not love her,
+ill as she was, and 'useless to everyone, and better dead.'  He had
+mourned her sincerely, but his face had looked younger since she died.
+If she could only have believed that she made him happy, how much happier
+would the twenty years of their companionship have been!
+
+June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly taken
+her own mother's place; and ever since old Jolyon died she had been
+established in a sort of studio in London.  But she had come back to
+Robin Hill on her stepmother's death, and gathered the reins there into
+her small decided hands.  Jolly was then at Harrow; Holly still learning
+from Mademoiselle Beauce.  There had been nothing to keep Jolyon at home,
+and he had removed his grief and his paint-box abroad.  There he had
+wandered, for the most part in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in
+Paris.  He had stayed there several months, and come back with the
+younger face and the short fair beard.  Essentially a man who merely
+lodged in any house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign
+at Robin Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where and
+when he liked.  She was inclined, it is true, to regard the house rather
+as an asylum for her proteges! but his own outcast days had filled Jolyon
+for ever with sympathy towards an outcast, and June's 'lame ducks' about
+the place did not annoy him.  By all means let her have them down--and
+feed them up; and though his slightly cynical humour perceived that they
+ministered to his daughter's love of domination as well as moved her warm
+heart, he never ceased to admire her for having so many ducks.  He fell,
+indeed, year by year into a more and more detached and brotherly attitude
+towards his own son and daughters, treating them with a sort of whimsical
+equality.  When he went down to Harrow to see Jolly, he never quite knew
+which of them was the elder, and would sit eating cherries with him out
+of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical smile twisting up an
+eyebrow and curling his lips a little.  And he was always careful to have
+money in his pocket, and to be modish in his dress, so that his son need
+not blush for him.  They were perfect friends, but never seemed to have
+occasion for verbal confidences, both having the competitive
+self-consciousness of Forsytes.  They knew they would stand by each other
+in scrapes, but there  was no need to talk about it.  Jolyon had a
+striking horror--partly original sin, but partly the result of his early
+immorality--of the moral attitude.  The most he could ever have said to
+his son would have been:
+
+"Look here, old man; don't forget you're a gentleman," and then have
+wondered whimsically whether that was not a snobbish sentiment.  The
+great cricket match was perhaps the most searching and awkward time they
+annually went through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton. They would
+be particularly careful during that match, continually saying: "Hooray!
+Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!" to each other,
+when some disaster at which their hearts bounded happened to the opposing
+school.  And Jolyon would wear a grey top hat, instead of his usual soft
+one, to save his son's feelings, for a black top hat he could not
+stomach.  When Jolly went up to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused,
+humble, and a little anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these
+youths who seemed so much more assured and old than himself.  He often
+thought, 'Glad I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing at
+Lloyds--'it's so innocuous.  You can't look down on a painter--you can't
+take him seriously enough.'  For Jolly, who had a sort of natural
+lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who secretly amused
+his father.  The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and his
+grandfather's deepset iron-grey eyes.  He was well-built and very
+upright, and always pleased Jolyon's aesthetic sense, so that he was a
+tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are of those of their own sex
+whom they admire physically.  On that occasion, however, he actually did
+screw up his courage to give his son advice, and this was it:
+
+"Look here, old man, you're bound to get into debt; mind you come to me
+at once.  Of course, I'll always pay them.  But you might remember that
+one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays one's own way.  And
+don't ever borrow, except from me, will you?"
+
+And Jolly had said:
+
+"All right, Dad, I won't," and he never had.
+
+"And there's just one other thing.  I don't know much about morality and
+that, but there is this: It's always worth while before you do anything
+to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is
+absolutely necessary."
+
+Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had squeezed his
+father's hand.  And Jolyon had thought: 'I wonder if I had the right to
+say that?'  He always had a sort of dread of losing the dumb confidence
+they had in each other; remembering how for long years he had lost his
+own father's, so that there had been nothing between them but love at a
+great distance.  He under-estimated, no doubt, the change in the spirit
+of the age since he himself went up to Cambridge in '65; and perhaps he
+underestimated, too, his boy's power of understanding that he was
+tolerant to the very bone.  It was that tolerance of his, and possibly
+his scepticism, which ever made his relations towards June so queerly
+defensive.  She was such a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly
+well; wanted things so inexorably until she got them--and then, indeed,
+often dropped them like a hot potato.  Her mother had been like that,
+whence had come all those tears.  Not that his incompatibility with his
+daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. Young
+Jolyon.  One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife's
+case one could not be amused.  To see June set her heart and jaw on a
+thing until she got it was all right, because it was never anything which
+interfered fundamentally with Jolyon's liberty--the one thing on which
+his jaw was also absolutely rigid, a considerable jaw, under that short
+grizzling beard.  Nor was there ever any necessity for real
+heart-to-heart encounters.  One could break away into irony--as indeed he
+often had to.  But the real trouble with June was that she had never
+appealed to his aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her
+red-gold hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the
+Berserker in her spirit.  It was very different with Holly, soft and
+quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere.  He
+watched this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with
+extraordinary interest.  Would she come out a swan?  With her sallow oval
+face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark lashes, she might, or
+she might not.  Only this last year had he been able to guess.  Yes, she
+would be a swan--rather a dark one, always a shy one, but an authentic
+swan.  She was eighteen now, and Mademoiselle Beauce was gone--the
+excellent lady had removed, after eleven years haunted by her continuous
+reminiscences of the 'well-brrred little Tayleurs,' to another family
+whose bosom would now be agitated by her reminiscences of the
+'well-brrred little Forsytes.' She had taught Holly to speak French like
+herself.
+
+Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his younger
+daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the afternoon of
+October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him which caused his
+eyebrows to go up:
+
+        Mr. SOAMES FORSYTE
+
+THE SHELTER,          CONNOISSEURS CLUB, MAPLEDURHAM.          ST.
+JAMES'S.
+
+But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....
+
+To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a little
+daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved father lying
+peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never likely to be,
+forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man as Jolyon.  A sense
+as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and about the end of one whose
+life had been so well-ordered, balanced, and above-board.  It seemed
+incredible that his father could thus have vanished without, as it were,
+announcing his intention, without last words to his son, and due
+farewells.  And those incoherent allusions of little Holly to 'the lady
+in grey,' of Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded)
+involved all things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father's
+will and the codicil thereto.  It had been his duty as executor of that
+will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her life
+interest in fifteen thousand pounds.  He had called on her to explain
+that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the
+charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of L430 odd a year,
+clear of income tax.  This was but the third time he had seen his cousin
+Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was not quite
+sure.  He remembered having seen her sitting in the Botanical Gardens
+waiting for Bosinney--a passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of
+Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' and again, when, charged by his father, he had
+gone to Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's death was
+known.  He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
+drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing from
+wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the compassion he had
+felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are not at home!" and the
+slam of the front door.
+
+This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from that
+warp of wild hope and despair.  Looking at her, he thought: 'Yes, you are
+just what the Dad would have admired!'  And the strange story of his
+father's Indian summer became slowly clear to him.  She spoke of old
+Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes. "He was so wonderfully kind
+to me; I don't know why.  He looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in
+that chair under the tree; it was I who first came on him sitting there,
+you know.  Such a lovely day.  I don't think an end could have been
+happier.  We should all like to go out like that."
+
+'Quite right!' he had thought.  'We should all a like to go out in full
+summer with beauty stepping towards us across a lawn.'  And looking round
+the little, almost empty drawing-room, he had asked her what she was
+going to do now. "I am going to live again a little, Cousin Jolyon.  It's
+wonderful to have money of one's own. I've never had any.  I shall keep
+this flat, I think; I'm used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy."
+
+"Exactly!" Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling lips; and
+he had gone away thinking: 'A fascinating woman!  What a waste! I'm glad
+the Dad left her that money.'  He had not seen her again, but every
+quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it to her bank, with a note
+to the Chelsea flat to say that he had done so; and always he had
+received a note in acknowledgment, generally from the flat, but sometimes
+from Italy; so that her personality had become embodied in slightly
+scented grey paper, an upright fine handwriting, and the words, 'Dear
+Cousin Jolyon.'  Man of property that he now was, the slender cheque he
+signed often gave rise to the thought: 'Well, I suppose she just
+manages'; sliding into a vague wonder how she was faring otherwise in a
+world of men not wont to let beauty go unpossessed.  At first Holly had
+spoken of her sometimes, but 'ladies in grey' soon fade from children's
+memories; and the tightening of June's lips in those first weeks after
+her grandfather's death whenever her former friend's name was mentioned,
+had discouraged allusion.  Only once, indeed, had June spoken definitely:
+"I've forgiven her.  I'm frightfully glad she's independent now...."
+
+On receiving Soames' card, Jolyon said to the maid--for he could not
+abide butlers--"Show him into the study, please, and say I'll be there in
+a minute"; and then he looked at Holly and asked:
+
+"Do you remember 'the lady in grey,' who used to give you music-lessons?"
+
+"Oh yes, why?  Has she come?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a coat, was
+silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not for those young
+ears.  His face, in fact, became whimsical perplexity incarnate while he
+journeyed towards the study.
+
+Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at the oak
+tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he thought: 'Who's
+that boy?  Surely they never had a child.'
+
+The elder figure turned.  The meeting of those two Forsytes of the second
+generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in the house built
+for the one and owned and occupied by the other, was marked by subtle
+defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at cordiality.  'Has he come about
+his wife?' Jolyon was thinking; and Soames, 'How shall I begin?' while
+Val, brought to break the ice, stood negligently scrutinising this
+'bearded pard' from under his dark, thick eyelashes.
+
+"This is Val Dartie," said Soames, "my sister's son.  He's just going up
+to Oxford.  I thought I'd like him to know your boy."
+
+"Ah!  I'm sorry Jolly's away.  What college?"
+
+"B.N.C.," replied Val.
+
+"Jolly's at the 'House,' but he'll be delighted to look you up."
+
+"Thanks awfully."
+
+"Holly's in--if you could put up with a female relation, she'd show you
+round.  You'll find her in the hall if you go through the curtains.  I
+was just painting her."
+
+With another "Thanks, awfully!"  Val vanished, leaving the two cousins
+with the ice unbroken.
+
+"I see you've some drawings at the 'Water Colours,'" said Soames.
+
+Jolyon winced.  He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family at large
+for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his mind with Frith's
+'Derby Day' and Landseer prints.  He had heard from June that Soames was
+a connoisseur, which made it worse.  He had become aware, too, of a
+curious sensation of repugnance.
+
+"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.
+
+"No," answered Soames between close lips, "not since--as a matter of
+fact, it's about that I've come.  You're her trustee, I'm told."
+
+Jolyon nodded.
+
+"Twelve years is a long time," said Soames rapidly: "I--I'm tired of it."
+
+Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:
+
+"Won't you smoke?"
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.
+
+"I wish to be free," said Soames abruptly.
+
+"I don't see her," murmured Jolyon through the fume of his cigarette.
+
+"But you know where she lives, I suppose?"
+
+Jolyon nodded.  He did not mean to give her address without permission.
+Soames seemed to divine his thought.
+
+"I don't want her address," he said; "I know it."
+
+"What exactly do you want?"
+
+"She deserted me.  I want a divorce."
+
+"Rather late in the day, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames.  And there was a silence.
+
+"I don't know much about these things--at least, I've forgotten," said
+Jolyon with a wry smile.  He himself had had to wait for death to grant
+him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon.  "Do you wish me to see her
+about it?"
+
+Soames raised his eyes to his cousin's face.  "I suppose there's
+someone," he said.
+
+A shrug moved Jolyon's shoulders.
+
+"I don't know at all.  I imagine you may have both lived as if the other
+were dead.  It's usual in these cases."
+
+Soames turned to the window.  A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed the
+terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind.  Jolyon saw the
+figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn towards the
+stables.  'I'm not going to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,'
+he thought.  'I must act for her.  The Dad would have wished that.'  And
+for a swift moment he seemed to see his father's figure in the old
+armchair, just beyond Soames, sitting with knees crossed, The Times in
+his hand.  It vanished.
+
+"My father was fond of her," he said quietly.
+
+"Why he should have been I don't know," Soames answered without looking
+round.  "She brought trouble to your daughter June; she brought trouble
+to everyone.  I gave her all she wanted.  I would have given her
+even--forgiveness--but she chose to leave me."
+
+In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice. What
+was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be sorry for him?
+
+"I can go and see her, if you like," he said.  "I suppose she might be
+glad of a divorce, but I know nothing."
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"Yes, please go.  As I say, I know her address; but I've no wish to see
+her."  His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were very dry.
+
+"You'll have some tea?" said Jolyon, stifling the words: 'And see the
+house.'  And he led the way into the hall.  When he had rung the bell and
+ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing to the wall.  He
+could not bear, somehow, that his work should be seen by Soames, who was
+standing there in the middle of the great room which had been designed
+expressly to afford wall space for his own pictures.  In his cousin's
+face, with its unseizable family likeness to himself, and its chinny,
+narrow, concentrated look, Jolyon saw that which moved him to the
+thought: 'That chap could never forget anything--nor ever give himself
+away.  He's pathetic!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE COLT AND THE FILLY
+
+When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was thinking:
+'This is jolly dull!  Uncle Soames does take the bun. I wonder what this
+filly's like?'  He anticipated no pleasure from her society; and suddenly
+he saw her standing there looking at him. Why, she was pretty!  What
+luck!
+
+"I'm afraid you don't know me," he said.  "My name's Val Dartie--I'm
+once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know.  My mother's
+name was Forsyte."
+
+Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too shy to
+withdraw it, said:
+
+"I don't know any of my relations.  Are there many?"
+
+"Tons.  They're awful--most of them.  At least, I don't know--some of
+them.  One's relations always are, aren't they?"
+
+"I expect they think one awful too," said Holly.
+
+"I don't know why they should.  No one could think you awful, of course."
+
+Holly looked at him--the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave young
+Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.
+
+"I mean there are people and people," he added astutely.  "Your dad looks
+awfully decent, for instance."
+
+"Oh yes!" said Holly fervently; "he is."
+
+A flush mounted in Val's cheeks--that scene in the Pandemonium
+promenade--the dark man with the pink carnation developing into his own
+father!  "But you know what the Forsytes are," he said almost viciously.
+"Oh! I forgot; you don't."
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit.  Look at Uncle Soames!"
+
+"I'd like to," said Holly.
+
+Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers.  "Oh! no," he said,
+"let's go out.  You'll see him quite soon enough.  What's your brother
+like?"
+
+Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without
+answering.  How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered anything,
+had been her lord, master, and ideal?
+
+"Does he sit on you?" said Val shrewdly.  "I shall be knowing him at
+Oxford.  Have you got any horses?"
+
+Holly nodded.  "Would you like to see the stables?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into the
+stable-yard.  There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy brown-and-white dog,
+so old that he did not get up, but faintly waved the tail curled over his
+back.
+
+"That's Balthasar," said Holly; "he's so old--awfully old, nearly as old
+as I am.  Poor old boy!  He's devoted to Dad."
+
+"Balthasar!  That's a rum name.  He isn't purebred you know."
+
+"No! but he's a darling," and she bent down to stroke the dog. Gentle and
+supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck and hands, she
+seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing slipped between him and all
+previous knowledge.
+
+"When grandfather died," she said, "he wouldn't eat for two days. He saw
+him die, you know."
+
+"Was that old Uncle Jolyon?  Mother always says he was a topper."
+
+"He was," said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.
+
+In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a long
+black tail and mane.  "This is mine--Fairy."
+
+"Ah!" said Val, "she's a jolly palfrey.  But you ought to bang her tail.
+She'd look much smarter."  Then catching her wondering look, he thought
+suddenly: 'I don't know--anything she likes!'  And he took a long sniff
+of the stable air.  "Horses are ripping, aren't they?  My Dad..."  he
+stopped.
+
+"Yes?" said Holly.
+
+An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him--but not quite. "Oh!  I
+don't know he's often gone a mucker over them.  I'm jolly keen on them
+too--riding and hunting.  I like racing awfully, as well; I should like
+to be a gentleman rider."  And oblivious of the fact that he had but one
+more day in town, with two engagements, he plumped out:
+
+"I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in Richmond
+Park?"
+
+Holly clasped her hands.
+
+"Oh yes!  I simply love riding.  But there's Jolly's horse; why don't you
+ride him?  Here he is.  We could go after tea."
+
+Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.
+
+He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown boots and
+Bedford cords.
+
+"I don't much like riding his horse," he said.  "He mightn't like it.
+Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect.  Not that I believe in
+buckling under to him, you know.  You haven't got an uncle, have you?
+This is rather a good beast," he added, scrutinising Jolly's horse, a
+dark brown, which was showing the whites of its eyes.  "You haven't got
+any hunting here, I suppose?"
+
+"No; I don't know that I want to hunt.  It must be awfully exciting, of
+course; but it's cruel, isn't it?  June says so."
+
+"Cruel?" ejaculated Val.  "Oh! that's all rot.  Who's June?"
+
+"My sister--my half-sister, you know--much older than me."  She had put
+her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly's horse, and was rubbing her nose
+against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which seemed to have an
+hypnotic effect on the animal.  Val contemplated her cheek resting
+against the horse's nose, and her eyes gleaming round at him.  'She's
+really a duck,' he thought.
+
+They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by the dog
+Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth, and clearly
+expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.
+
+"This is a ripping place," said Val from under the oak tree, where they
+had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.
+
+"Yes," said Holly, and sighed.  "Of course I want to go everywhere. I
+wish I were a gipsy."
+
+"Yes, gipsies are jolly," replied Val, with a conviction which had just
+come to him; "you're rather like one, you know."
+
+Holly's face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded by the
+sun.
+
+"To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in the
+open--oh! wouldn't it be fun?"
+
+"Let's do it!" said Val.
+
+"Oh yes, let's!"
+
+"It'd be grand sport, just you and I."
+
+Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.
+
+"Well, we've got to do it," said Val obstinately, but reddening too.
+
+"I believe in doing things you want to do.  What's down there?"
+
+"The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm."
+
+"Let's go down!"
+
+Holly glanced back at the house.
+
+"It's tea-time, I expect; there's Dad beckoning."
+
+Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.
+
+When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two middle-aged
+Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical effect, and they became
+quite silent.  It was, indeed, an impressive spectacle.  The two were
+seated side by side on an arrangement in marqueterie which looked like
+three silvery pink chairs made one, with a low tea-table in front of
+them.  They seemed to have taken up that position, as far apart as the
+seat would permit, so that they need not look at each other too much; and
+they were eating and drinking rather than talking--Soames with his air of
+despising the tea-cake as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding himself
+slightly amusing.  To the casual eye neither would have seemed greedy,
+but both were getting through a good deal of sustenance.  The two young
+ones having been supplied with food, the process went on silent and
+absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, Jolyon said to Soames:
+
+"And how's Uncle James?"
+
+"Thanks, very shaky."
+
+"We're a wonderful family, aren't we?  The other day I was calculating
+the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my father's family Bible.  I
+make it eighty-four already, and five still living.  They ought to beat
+the record;" and looking whimsically at Soames, he added:
+
+"We aren't the men they were, you know."
+
+Soames smiled.  'Do you really think I shall admit that I'm not their
+equal'; he seemed to be saying, 'or that I've got to give up anything,
+especially life?'
+
+"We may live to their age, perhaps," pursued Jolyon, "but
+self-consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that's the difference
+between us.  We've lost conviction. How and when self-consciousness was
+born I never can make out.  My father had a little, but I don't believe
+any other of the old Forsytes ever had a scrap.  Never to see yourself as
+others see you, it's a wonderful preservative.  The whole history of the
+last century is in the difference between us. And between us and you," he
+added, gazing through a ring of smoke at Val and Holly, uncomfortable
+under his quizzical regard, "there'll be--another difference.  I wonder
+what."
+
+Soames took out his watch.
+
+"We must go," he said, "if we're to catch our train."
+
+"Uncle Soames never misses a train," muttered Val, with his mouth full.
+
+"Why should I?" Soames answered simply.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," grumbled Val, "other people do."
+
+At the front door he gave Holly's slim brown hand a long and
+surreptitious squeeze.
+
+"Look out for me to-morrow," he whispered; "three o'clock.  I'll wait for
+you in the road; it'll save time.  We'll have a ripping ride."  He gazed
+back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the principles of a man
+about town, would have waved his hand.  He felt in no mood to tolerate
+his uncle's conversation.  But he was not in danger.  Soames preserved a
+perfect muteness, busy with far-away thoughts.
+
+The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and a half
+which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days when he came
+down to watch with secret pride the building of the house--that house
+which was to have been the home of him and her from whom he was now going
+to seek release.  He looked back once, up that endless vista of autumn
+lane between the yellowing hedges. What an age ago!  "I don't want to see
+her," he had said to Jolyon. Was that true?  'I may have to,' he thought;
+and he shivered, seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say
+mean footsteps on one's grave.  A chilly world!  A queer world!  And
+glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: 'Wish I were his age! I
+wonder what she's like now!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP
+
+When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting, for
+daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving unconsciously a
+revival of that momentary vision of his father sitting in the old leather
+chair with his knees crossed and his straight eyes gazing up from under
+the dome of his massive brow.  Often in this little room, cosiest in the
+house, Jolyon would catch a moment of communion with his father.  Not,
+indeed, that he had definitely any faith in the persistence of the human
+spirit--the feeling was not so logical--it was, rather, an atmospheric
+impact, like a scent, or one of those strong animistic impressions from
+forms, or effects of light, to which those with the artist's eye are
+especially prone. Here only--in this little unchanged room where his
+father had spent the most of his waking hours--could be retrieved the
+feeling that he was not quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old
+spirit and the warmth of his masterful lovability endured.
+
+What would his father be advising now, in this sudden recrudescence of an
+old tragedy--what would he say to this menace against her to whom he had
+taken such a fancy in the last weeks of his life?  'I must do my best for
+her,' thought Jolyon; 'he left her to me in his will.  But what is the
+best?'
+
+And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd common
+sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient chair and crossed
+his knees.  But he felt a mere shadow sitting there; nor did any
+inspiration come, while the fingers of the wind tapped on the darkening
+panes of the french-window.
+
+'Go and see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here? What's her
+life been?  What is it now, I wonder?  Beastly to rake up things at this
+time of day.'  Again the figure of his cousin standing with a hand on a
+front door of a fine olive-green leaped out, vivid, like one of those
+figures from old-fashioned clocks when the hour strikes; and his words
+sounded in Jolyon's ears clearer than any chime: "I manage my own
+affairs.  I've told you once, I tell you again: We are not at home."  The
+repugnance he had then felt for Soames--for his flat-cheeked, shaven face
+full of spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure
+slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not digest--came now
+again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase.  'I dislike him,' he
+thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me. And that's lucky; it'll
+make it easier for me to back his wife.' Half-artist, and half-Forsyte,
+Jolyon was constitutionally averse from what he termed 'ructions'; unless
+angered, he conformed deeply to that classic description of the she-dog,
+'Er'd ruther run than fight.'  A little smile became settled in his
+beard.  Ironical that Soames should come down here--to this house, built
+for himself! How he had gazed and gaped at this ruin of his past
+intention; furtively nosing at the walls and stairway, appraising
+everything! And intuitively Jolyon thought: 'I believe the fellow even
+now would like to be living here.  He could never leave off longing for
+what he once owned!  Well, I must act, somehow or other; but it's a
+bore--a great bore.'
+
+Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene would see
+him.
+
+The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so
+wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms. Rumours of
+war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the close of the
+summer holidays.  And the streets to Jolyon, who was not often up in
+town, had a feverish look, due to these new motorcars and cabs, of which
+he disapproved aesthetically.  He counted these vehicles from his hansom,
+and made the proportion of them one in twenty.  'They were one in thirty
+about a year ago,' he thought; 'they've come to stay.  Just so much more
+rattling round of wheels and general stink'--for he was one of those
+rather rare Liberals who object to anything new when it takes a material
+form; and he instructed his driver to get down to the river quickly, out
+of the traffic, desiring to look at the water through the mellowing
+screen of plane-trees.  At the little block of flats which stood back
+some fifty yards from the Embankment, he told the cabman to wait, and
+went up to the first floor.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Heron was at home!
+
+The effect of a settled if very modest income was at once apparent to him
+remembering the threadbare refinement in that tiny flat eight years ago
+when he announced her good fortune.  Everything was now fresh, dainty,
+and smelled of flowers.  The general effect was silvery with touches of
+black, hydrangea colour, and gold.  'A woman of great taste,' he thought.
+Time had dealt gently with Jolyon, for he was a Forsyte.  But with Irene
+Time hardly seemed to deal at all, or such was his impression.  She
+appeared to him not a day older, standing there in mole-coloured velvet
+corduroy, with soft dark eyes and dark gold hair, with outstretched hand
+and a little smile.
+
+"Won't you sit down?"
+
+He had probably never occupied a chair with a fuller sense of
+embarrassment.
+
+"You look absolutely unchanged," he said.
+
+"And you look younger, Cousin Jolyon."
+
+Jolyon ran his hands through his hair, whose thickness was still a
+comfort to him.
+
+"I'm ancient, but I don't feel it.  That's one thing about painting, it
+keeps you young.  Titian lived to ninety-nine, and had to have plague to
+kill him off.  Do you know, the first time I ever saw you I thought of a
+picture by him?"
+
+"When did you see me for the first time?"
+
+"In the Botanical Gardens."
+
+"How did you know me, if you'd never seen me before?"
+
+"By someone who came up to you."  He was looking at her hardily, but her
+face did not change; and she said quietly:
+
+"Yes; many lives ago."
+
+"What is your recipe for youth, Irene?"
+
+"People who don't live are wonderfully preserved."
+
+H'm! a bitter little saying!  People who don't live!  But an opening, and
+he took it.  "You remember my Cousin Soames?"
+
+He saw her smile faintly at that whimsicality, and at once went on:
+
+"He came to see me the day before yesterday!  He wants a divorce. Do
+you?"
+
+"I?"  The word seemed startled out of her.  "After twelve years? It's
+rather late.  Won't it be difficult?"
+
+Jolyon looked hard into her face.  "Unless...."  he said.
+
+"Unless I have a lover now.  But I have never had one since."
+
+What did he feel at the simplicity and candour of those words? Relief,
+surprise, pity!  Venus for twelve years without a lover!
+
+"And yet," he said, "I suppose you would give a good deal to be free,
+too?"
+
+"I don't know.  What does it matter, now?"
+
+"But if you were to love again?"
+
+"I should love."  In that simple answer she seemed to sum up the whole
+philosophy of one on whom the world had turned its back.
+
+"Well!  Is there anything you would like me to say to him?"
+
+"Only that I'm sorry he's not free.  He had his chance once.  I don't
+know why he didn't take it."
+
+"Because he was a Forsyte; we never part with things, you know, unless we
+want something in their place; and not always then."
+
+Irene smiled.  "Don't you, Cousin Jolyon?--I think you do."
+
+"Of course, I'm a bit of a mongrel--not quite a pure Forsyte.  I never
+take the halfpennies off my cheques, I put them on," said Jolyon
+uneasily.
+
+"Well, what does Soames want in place of me now?"
+
+"I don't know; perhaps children."
+
+She was silent for a little, looking down.
+
+"Yes," she murmured; "it's hard.  I would help him to be free if I
+could."
+
+Jolyon gazed into his hat, his embarrassment was increasing fast; so was
+his admiration, his wonder, and his pity.  She was so lovely, and so
+lonely; and altogether it was such a coil!
+
+"Well," he said, "I shall have to see Soames.  If there's anything I can
+do for you I'm always at your service.  You must think of me as a
+wretched substitute for my father.  At all events I'll let you know what
+happens when I speak to Soames.  He may supply the material himself."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You see, he has a lot to lose; and I have nothing.  I should like him to
+be free; but I don't see what I can do."
+
+"Nor I at the moment," said Jolyon, and soon after took his leave. He
+went down to his hansom.  Half-past three!  Soames would be at his office
+still.
+
+"To the Poultry," he called through the trap.  In front of the Houses of
+Parliament and in Whitehall, newsvendors were calling, "Grave situation
+in the Transvaal!" but the cries hardly roused him, absorbed in
+recollection of that very beautiful figure, of her soft dark glance, and
+the words: "I have never had one since." What on earth did such a woman
+do with her life, back-watered like this?  Solitary, unprotected, with
+every man's hand against her or rather--reaching out to grasp her at the
+least sign.  And year after year she went on like that!
+
+The word 'Poultry' above the passing citizens brought him back to
+reality.
+
+'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte,' in black letters on a ground the colour
+of peasoup, spurred him to a sort of vigour, and he went up the stone
+stairs muttering: "Fusty musty ownerships!  Well, we couldn't do without
+them!"
+
+"I want Mr. Soames Forsyte," he said to the boy who opened the door.
+
+"What name?"
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
+
+The youth looked at him curiously, never having seen a Forsyte with a
+beard, and vanished.
+
+The offices of 'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte' had slowly absorbed the
+offices of 'Tooting and Bowles,' and occupied the whole of the first
+floor.
+
+The firm consisted now of nothing but Soames and a number of managing and
+articled clerks.  The complete retirement of James some six years ago had
+accelerated business, to which the final touch of speed had been imparted
+when Bustard dropped off, worn out, as many believed, by the suit of
+'Fryer versus Forsyte,' more in Chancery than ever and less likely to
+benefit its beneficiaries. Soames, with his saner grasp of actualities,
+had never permitted it to worry him; on the contrary, he had long
+perceived that Providence had presented him therein with L200 a year net
+in perpetuity, and--why not?
+
+When Jolyon entered, his cousin was drawing out a list of holdings in
+Consols, which in view of the rumours of war he was going to advise his
+companies to put on the market at once, before other companies did the
+same.  He looked round, sidelong, and said:
+
+"How are you?  Just one minute.  Sit down, won't you?" And having entered
+three amounts, and set a ruler to keep his place, he turned towards
+Jolyon, biting the side of his flat forefinger....
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+"I have seen her."
+
+Soames frowned.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She has remained faithful to memory."
+
+Having said that, Jolyon was ashamed.  His cousin had flushed a dusky
+yellowish red.  What had made him tease the poor brute!
+
+"I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free.  Twelve years is a long
+time.  You know your law, and what chance it gives you." Soames uttered a
+curious little grunt, and the two remained a full minute without
+speaking.  'Like wax!' thought Jolyon, watching that close face, where
+the flush was fast subsiding.  'He'll never give me a sign of what he's
+thinking, or going to do.  Like wax!'  And he transferred his gaze to a
+plan of that flourishing town, 'By-Street on Sea,' the future existence
+of which lay exposed on the wall to the possessive instincts of the
+firm's clients.  The whimsical thought flashed through him: 'I wonder if
+I shall get a bill of costs for this--"To attending Mr. Jolyon Forsyte in
+the matter of my divorce, to receiving his account of his visit to my
+wife, and to advising him to go and see her again, sixteen and
+eightpence."'
+
+Suddenly Soames said: "I can't go on like this.  I tell you, I can't go
+on like this."  His eyes were shifting from side to side, like an
+animal's when it looks for way of escape.  'He really suffers,' thought
+Jolyon; 'I've no business to forget that, just because I don't like him.'
+
+"Surely," he said gently, "it lies with yourself.  A man can always put
+these things through if he'll take it on himself."
+
+Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come from
+somewhere very deep.
+
+"Why should I suffer more than I've suffered already?  Why should I?"
+
+Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders.  His reason agreed, his instinct
+rebelled; he could not have said why.
+
+"Your father," went on Soames, "took an interest in her--why, goodness
+knows!  And I suppose you do too?" he gave Jolyon a sharp look.  "It
+seems to me that one only has to do another person a wrong to get all the
+sympathy.  I don't know in what way I was to blame--I've never known.  I
+always treated her well.  I gave her everything she could wish for.  I
+wanted her."
+
+Again Jolyon's reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head. 'What is
+it?' he thought; 'there must be something wrong in me. Yet if there is,
+I'd rather be wrong than right.'
+
+"After all," said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, "she was my
+wife."
+
+In a flash the thought went through his listener: 'There it is!
+Ownerships!  Well, we all own things.  But--human beings!  Pah!'
+
+"You have to look at facts," he said drily, "or rather the want of them."
+
+Soames gave him another quick suspicious look.
+
+"The want of them?" he said.  "Yes, but I am not so sure."
+
+"I beg your pardon," replied Jolyon; "I've told you what she said. It was
+explicit."
+
+"My experience has not been one to promote blind confidence in her word.
+We shall see."
+
+Jolyon got up.
+
+"Good-bye," he said curtly.
+
+"Good-bye," returned Soames; and Jolyon went out trying to understand the
+look, half-startled, half-menacing, on his cousin's face.  He sought
+Waterloo Station in a disturbed frame of mind, as though the skin of his
+moral being had been scraped; and all the way down in the train he
+thought of Irene in her lonely flat, and of Soames in his lonely office,
+and of the strange paralysis of life that lay on them both.  'In
+chancery!'  he thought.  'Both their necks in chancery--and her's so
+pretty!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+VAL HEARS THE NEWS
+
+The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous feature in
+the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke two and kept one, it
+was the latter event which caused him, if anything, the greater surprise,
+while jogging back to town from Robin Hill after his ride with Holly.
+She had been even prettier than he had thought her yesterday, on her
+silver-roan, long-tailed 'palfrey'; and it seemed to him, self-critical
+in the brumous October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that only
+his boots had shone throughout their two-hour companionship.  He took out
+his new gold 'hunter'--present from James--and looked not at the time,
+but at sections of his face in the glittering back of its opened case.
+He had a temporary spot over one eyebrow, and it displeased him, for it
+must have displeased her.  Crum never had any spots. Together with Crum
+rose the scene in the promenade of the Pandemonium.  To-day he had not
+had the faintest desire to unbosom himself to Holly about his father.
+His father lacked poetry, the stirrings of which he was feeling for the
+first time in his nineteen years.  The Liberty, with Cynthia Dark, that
+almost mythical embodiment of rapture; the Pandemonium, with the woman of
+uncertain age--both seemed to Val completely 'off,' fresh from communion
+with this new, shy, dark-haired young cousin of his.  She rode 'Jolly
+well,' too, so that it had been all the more flattering that she had let
+him lead her where he would in the long gallops of Richmond Park, though
+she knew them so much better than he did. Looking back on it all, he was
+mystified by the barrenness of his speech; he felt that he could say 'an
+awful lot of fetching things' if he had but the chance again, and the
+thought that he must go back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and to
+Oxford on the twelfth--'to that beastly exam,' too--without the faintest
+chance of first seeing her again, caused darkness to settle on his spirit
+even more quickly than on the evening.  He should write to her, however,
+and she had promised to answer.  Perhaps, too, she would come up to
+Oxford to see her brother.  That thought was like the first star, which
+came out as he rode into Padwick's livery stables in the purlieus of
+Sloane Square.  He got off and stretched himself luxuriously, for he had
+ridden some twenty-five good miles.  The Dartie within him made him
+chaffer for five minutes with young Padwick concerning the favourite for
+the Cambridgeshire; then with the words, "Put the gee down to my
+account," he walked away, a little wide at the knees, and flipping his
+boots with his knotty little cane.  'I don't feel a bit inclined to go
+out,' he thought. 'I wonder if mother will stand fizz for my last night!'
+With 'fizz' and recollection, he could well pass a domestic evening.
+
+When he came down, speckless after his bath, he found his mother
+scrupulous in a low evening dress, and, to his annoyance, his Uncle
+Soames.  They stopped talking when he came in; then his uncle said:
+
+"He'd better be told."
+
+At those words, which meant something about his father, of course, Val's
+first thought was of Holly.  Was it anything beastly?  His mother began
+speaking.
+
+"Your father," she said in her fashionably appointed voice, while her
+fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, "your father, my
+dear boy, has--is not at Newmarket; he's on his way to South America.
+He--he's left us."
+
+Val looked from her to Soames.  Left them!  Was he sorry?  Was he fond of
+his father?  It seemed to him that he did not know.  Then, suddenly--as
+at a whiff of gardenias and cigars--his heart twitched within him, and he
+was sorry.  One's father belonged to one, could not go off in this
+fashion--it was not done!  Nor had he always been the 'bounder' of the
+Pandemonium promenade.  There were precious memories of tailors' shops
+and horses, tips at school, and general lavish kindness, when in luck.
+
+"But why?" he said.  Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he had
+asked.  The mask of his mother's face was all disturbed; and he burst
+out:
+
+"All right, Mother, don't tell me!  Only, what does it mean?"
+
+"A divorce, Val, I'm afraid."
+
+Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his uncle--that
+uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a guarantee against the
+consequences of having a father, even against the Dartie blood in his own
+veins.  The flat-checked visage seemed to wince, and this upset him.
+
+"It won't be public, will it?"
+
+So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued to the
+unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public Press.
+
+"Can't it be done quietly somehow?  It's so disgusting for--for mother,
+and--and everybody."
+
+"Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure."
+
+"Yes--but, why is it necessary at all?  Mother doesn't want to marry
+again."
+
+Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his
+schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of--Holly! Unbearable!
+What was to be gained by it?
+
+"Do you, Mother?" he said sharply.
+
+Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the one she
+loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire chair in which she
+had been sitting.  She saw that her son would be against her unless he
+was told everything; and, yet, how could she tell him?  Thus, still
+plucking at the green brocade, she stared at Soames.  Val, too, stared at
+Soames.  Surely this embodiment of respectability and the sense of
+property could not wish to bring such a slur on his own sister!
+
+Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth surface
+of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his nephew, he began:
+
+"You don't understand what your mother has had to put up with these
+twenty years.  This is only the last straw, Val."  And glancing up
+sideways at Winifred, he added:
+
+"Shall I tell him?"
+
+Winifred was silent.  If he were not told, he would be against her! Yet,
+how dreadful to be told such things of his own father! Clenching her
+lips, she nodded.
+
+Soames spoke in a rapid, even voice:
+
+"He has always been a burden round your mother's neck.  She has paid his
+debts over and over again; he has often been drunk, abused and threatened
+her; and now he is gone to Buenos Aires with a dancer."  And, as if
+distrusting the efficacy of those words on the boy, he went on quickly:
+
+"He took your mother's pearls to give to her."
+
+Val jerked up his hand, then.  At that signal of distress Winifred cried
+out:
+
+"That'll do, Soames--stop!"
+
+In the boy, the Dartie and the Forsyte were struggling.  For debts,
+drink, dancers, he had a certain sympathy; but the pearls--no!  That was
+too much!  And suddenly he found his mother's hand squeezing his.
+
+"You see," he heard Soames say, "we can't have it all begin over again.
+There's a limit; we must strike while the iron's hot."
+
+Val freed his hand.
+
+"But--you're--never going to bring out that about the pearls!  I couldn't
+stand that--I simply couldn't!"
+
+Winifred cried out:
+
+"No, no, Val--oh no!  That's only to show you how impossible your father
+is!"  And his uncle nodded.  Somewhat assuaged, Val took out a cigarette.
+His father had bought him that thin curved case.  Oh! it was
+unbearable--just as he was going up to Oxford!
+
+"Can't mother be protected without?" he said.  "I could look after her.
+It could always be done later if it was really necessary."
+
+A smile played for a moment round Soames' lips, and became bitter.
+
+"You don't know what you're talking of; nothing's so fatal as delay in
+such matters."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I tell you, boy, nothing's so fatal.  I know from experience."
+
+His voice had the ring of exasperation.  Val regarded him round-eyed,
+never having known his uncle express any sort of feeling. Oh! Yes--he
+remembered now--there had been an Aunt Irene, and something had
+happened--something which people kept dark; he had heard his father once
+use an unmentionable word of her.
+
+"I don't want to speak ill of your father," Soames went on doggedly, "but
+I know him well enough to be sure that he'll be back on your mother's
+hands before a year's over.  You can imagine what that will mean to her
+and to all of you after this.  The only thing is to cut the knot for
+good."
+
+In spite of himself, Val was impressed; and, happening to look at his
+mother's face, he got what was perhaps his first real insight into the
+fact that his own feelings were not always what mattered most.
+
+"All right, mother," he said; "we'll back you up.  Only I'd like to know
+when it'll be.  It's my first term, you know.  I don't want to be up
+there when it comes off."
+
+"Oh! my dear boy," murmured Winifred, "it is a bore for you."  So, by
+habit, she phrased what, from the expression of her face, was the most
+poignant regret.  "When will it be, Soames?"
+
+"Can't tell--not for months.  We must get restitution first."
+
+'What the deuce is that?' thought Val.  'What silly brutes lawyers are!
+Not for months!  I know one thing: I'm not going to dine in!' And he
+said:
+
+"Awfully sorry, mother, I've got to go out to dinner now."
+
+Though it was his last night, Winifred nodded almost gratefully; they
+both felt that they had gone quite far enough in the expression of
+feeling.
+
+Val sought the misty freedom of Green Street, reckless and depressed.
+And not till he reached Piccadilly did he discover that he had only
+eighteen-pence.  One couldn't dine off eighteen-pence, and he was very
+hungry.  He looked longingly at the windows of the Iseeum Club, where he
+had often eaten of the best with his father! Those pearls!  There was no
+getting over them!  But the more he brooded and the further he walked the
+hungrier he naturally became. Short of trailing home, there were only two
+places where he could go--his grandfather's in Park Lane, and Timothy's
+in the Bayswater Road.  Which was the less deplorable?  At his
+grandfather's he would probably get a better dinner on the spur of the
+moment.  At Timothy's they gave you a jolly good feed when they expected
+you, not otherwise.  He decided on Park Lane, not unmoved by the thought
+that to go up to Oxford without affording his grandfather a chance to tip
+him was hardly fair to either of them.  His mother would hear he had been
+there, of course, and might think it funny; but he couldn't help that.
+He rang the bell.
+
+"Hullo, Warmson, any dinner for me, d'you think?"
+
+"They're just going in, Master Val.  Mr. Forsyte will be very glad to see
+you.  He was saying at lunch that he never saw you nowadays."
+
+Val grinned.
+
+"Well, here I am.  Kill the fatted calf, Warmson, let's have fizz."
+
+Warmson smiled faintly--in his opinion Val was a young limb.
+
+"I will ask Mrs. Forsyte, Master Val."
+
+"I say," Val grumbled, taking off his overcoat, "I'm not at school any
+more, you know."
+
+Warmson, not without a sense of humour, opened the door beyond the
+stag's-horn coat stand, with the words:
+
+"Mr. Valerus, ma'am."
+
+"Confound him!" thought Val, entering.
+
+A warm embrace, a "Well, Val!" from Emily, and a rather quavery "So there
+you are at last!" from James, restored his sense of dignity.
+
+"Why didn't you let us know?  There's only saddle of mutton. Champagne,
+Warmson," said Emily.  And they went in.
+
+At the great dining-table, shortened to its utmost, under which so many
+fashionable legs had rested, James sat at one end, Emily at the other,
+Val half-way between them; and something of the loneliness of his
+grandparents, now that all their four children were flown, reached the
+boy's spirit.  'I hope I shall kick the bucket long before I'm as old as
+grandfather,' he thought.  'Poor old chap, he's as thin as a rail!'  And
+lowering his voice while his grandfather and Warmson were in discussion
+about sugar in the soup, he said to Emily:
+
+"It's pretty brutal at home, Granny.  I suppose you know."
+
+"Yes, dear boy."
+
+"Uncle Soames was there when I left.  I say, isn't there anything to be
+done to prevent a divorce?  Why is he so beastly keen on it?"
+
+"Hush, my dear!" murmured Emily; "we're keeping it from your
+grandfather."
+
+James' voice sounded from the other end.
+
+"What's that?  What are you talking about?"
+
+"About Val's college," returned Emily.  "Young Pariser was there, James;
+you remember--he nearly broke the Bank at Monte Carlo afterwards."
+
+James muttered that he did not know--Val must look after himself up
+there, or he'd get into bad ways.  And he looked at his grandson with
+gloom, out of which affection distrustfully glimmered.
+
+"What I'm afraid of," said Val to his plate, "is of being hard up, you
+know."
+
+By instinct he knew that the weak spot in that old man was fear of
+insecurity for his grandchildren.
+
+"Well," said James, and the soup in his spoon dribbled over, "you'll have
+a good allowance; but you must keep within it."
+
+"Of course," murmured Val; "if it is good.  How much will it be,
+Grandfather?"
+
+"Three hundred and fifty; it's too much.  I had next to nothing at your
+age."
+
+Val sighed.  He had hoped for four, and been afraid of three.  "I don't
+know what your young cousin has," said James; "he's up there. His
+father's a rich man."
+
+"Aren't you?" asked Val hardily.
+
+"I?" replied James, flustered.  "I've got so many expenses.  Your
+father...." and he was silent.
+
+"Cousin Jolyon's got an awfully jolly place.  I went down there with
+Uncle Soames--ripping stables."
+
+"Ah!" murmured James profoundly.  "That house--I knew how it would be!"
+And he lapsed into gloomy meditation over his fish-bones. His son's
+tragedy, and the deep cleavage it had caused in the Forsyte family, had
+still the power to draw him down into a whirlpool of doubts and
+misgivings.  Val, who hankered to talk of Robin Hill, because Robin Hill
+meant Holly, turned to Emily and said:
+
+"Was that the house built for Uncle Soames?"  And, receiving her nod,
+went on: "I wish you'd tell me about him, Granny.  What became of Aunt
+Irene?  Is she still going?  He seems awfully worked-up about something
+to-night."
+
+Emily laid her finger on her lips, but the word Irene had caught James'
+ear.
+
+"What's that?" he said, staying a piece of mutton close to his lips.
+"Who's been seeing her?  I knew we hadn't heard the last of that."
+
+"Now, James," said Emily, "eat your dinner.  Nobody's been seeing
+anybody."
+
+James put down his fork.
+
+"There you go," he said.  "I might die before you'd tell me of it. Is
+Soames getting a divorce?"
+
+"Nonsense," said Emily with incomparable aplomb; "Soames is much too
+sensible."
+
+James had sought his own throat, gathering the long white whiskers
+together on the skin and bone of it.
+
+"She--she was always...." he said, and with that enigmatic remark the
+conversation lapsed, for Warmson had returned.  But later, when the
+saddle of mutton had been succeeded by sweet, savoury, and dessert, and
+Val had received a cheque for twenty pounds and his grandfather's
+kiss--like no other kiss in the world, from lips pushed out with a sort
+of fearful suddenness, as if yielding to weakness--he returned to the
+charge in the hall.
+
+"Tell us about Uncle Soames, Granny.  Why is he so keen on mother's
+getting a divorce?"
+
+"Your Uncle Soames," said Emily, and her voice had in it an exaggerated
+assurance, "is a lawyer, my dear boy.  He's sure to know best."
+
+"Is he?" muttered Val.  "But what did become of Aunt Irene?  I remember
+she was jolly good-looking."
+
+"She--er...."  said Emily, "behaved very badly.  We don't talk about it."
+
+"Well, I don't want everybody at Oxford to know about our affairs,"
+ejaculated Val; "it's a brutal idea.  Why couldn't father be prevented
+without its being made public?"
+
+Emily sighed.  She had always lived rather in an atmosphere of divorce,
+owing to her fashionable proclivities--so many of those whose legs had
+been under her table having gained a certain notoriety.  When, however,
+it touched her own family, she liked it no better than other people.  But
+she was eminently practical, and a woman of courage, who never pursued a
+shadow in preference to its substance.
+
+"Your mother," she said, "will be happier if she's quite free, Val.
+Good-night, my dear boy; and don't wear loud waistcoats up at Oxford,
+they're not the thing just now.  Here's a little present."
+
+With another five pounds in his hand, and a little warmth in his heart,
+for he was fond of his grandmother, he went out into Park Lane.  A wind
+had cleared the mist, the autumn leaves were rustling, and the stars were
+shining.  With all that money in his pocket an impulse to 'see life'
+beset him; but he had not gone forty yards in the direction of Piccadilly
+when Holly's shy face, and her eyes with an imp dancing in their gravity,
+came up before him, and his hand seemed to be tingling again from the
+pressure of her warm gloved hand.  'No, dash it!'  he thought, 'I'm going
+home!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SOAMES ENTERTAINS THE FUTURE
+
+It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and summer
+lingered below the yellowing leaves.  Soames took many looks at the day
+from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that Sunday morning.
+
+With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat, and
+equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them on the
+river.  Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he could not tell whether
+or no he wished to take Annette alone.  She was so very pretty--could he
+trust himself not to say irrevocable words, passing beyond the limits of
+discretion?  Roses on the veranda were still in bloom, and the hedges
+ever-green, so that there was almost nothing of middle-aged autumn to
+chill the mood; yet was he nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his
+powers to steer just the right course.  This visit had been planned to
+produce in Annette and her mother a due sense of his possessions, so that
+they should be ready to receive with respect any overture he might later
+be disposed to make.  He dressed with great care, making himself neither
+too young nor too old, very thankful that his hair was still thick and
+smooth and had no grey in it.  Three times he went up to his
+picture-gallery.  If they had any knowledge at all, they must see at once
+that his collection alone was worth at least thirty thousand pounds.  He
+minutely inspected, too, the pretty bedroom overlooking the river where
+they would take off their hats. It would be her bedroom if--if the matter
+went through, and she became his wife.  Going up to the dressing-table he
+passed his hand over the lilac-coloured pincushion, into which were stuck
+all kinds of pins; a bowl of pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his
+head turn just a little.  His wife!  If only the whole thing could be
+settled out of hand, and there was not the nightmare of this divorce to
+be gone through first; and with gloom puckered on his forehead, he looked
+out at the river shining beyond the roses and the lawn.  Madame Lamotte
+would never resist this prospect for her child; Annette would never
+resist her mother.  If only he were free!  He drove to the station to
+meet them.  What taste Frenchwomen had!  Madame Lamotte was in black with
+touches of lilac colour, Annette in greyish lilac linen, with cream
+coloured gloves and hat.  Rather pale she looked and Londony; and her
+blue eyes were demure.  Waiting for them to come down to lunch, Soames
+stood in the open french-window of the diningroom moved by that sensuous
+delight in sunshine and flowers and trees which only came to the full
+when youth and beauty were there to share it with one.  He had ordered
+the lunch with intense consideration; the wine was a very special
+Sauterne, the whole appointments of the meal perfect, the coffee served
+on the veranda super-excellent.  Madame Lamotte accepted creme de menthe;
+Annette refused.  Her manners were charming, with just a suspicion of
+'the conscious beauty' creeping into them.  'Yes,' thought Soames,
+'another year of London and that sort of life, and she'll be spoiled.'
+
+Madame was in sedate French raptures.  "Adorable!  Le soleil est si bon!
+How everything is chic, is it not, Annette?  Monsieur is a real Monte
+Cristo."  Annette murmured assent, with a look up at Soames which he
+could not read.  He proposed a turn on the river. But to punt two persons
+when one of them looked so ravishing on those Chinese cushions was merely
+to suffer from a sense of lost opportunity; so they went but a short way
+towards Pangbourne, drifting slowly back, with every now and then an
+autumn leaf dropping on Annette or on her mother's black amplitude.  And
+Soames was not happy, worried by the thought: 'How--when--where--can I
+say--what?' They did not yet even know that he was married.  To tell them
+he was married might jeopardise his every chance; yet, if he did not
+definitely make them understand that he wished for Annette's hand, it
+would be dropping into some other clutch before he was free to claim it.
+
+At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the Transvaal.
+
+"There'll be war," he said.
+
+Madame Lamotte lamented.
+
+"Ces pauvres gens bergers!"  Could they not be left to themselves?
+
+Soames smiled--the question seemed to him absurd.
+
+Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British could not
+abandon their legitimate commercial interests.
+
+"Ah! that!"  But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a little
+hypocrite.  They were talking of justice and the Uitlanders, not of
+business.  Monsieur was the first who had spoken to her of that.
+
+"The Boers are only half-civilised," remarked Soames; "they stand in the
+way of progress.  It will never do to let our suzerainty go."
+
+"What does that mean to say?  Suzerainty!"
+
+"What a strange word!"  Soames became eloquent, roused by these threats
+to the principle of possession, and stimulated by Annette's eyes fixed on
+him.  He was delighted when presently she said:
+
+"I think Monsieur is right.  They should be taught a lesson."  She was
+sensible!
+
+"Of course," he said, "we must act with moderation.  I'm no jingo. We
+must be firm without bullying.  Will you come up and see my pictures?"
+Moving from one to another of these treasures, he soon perceived that
+they knew nothing.  They passed his last Mauve, that remarkable study of
+a 'Hay-cart going Home,' as if it were a lithograph.  He waited almost
+with awe to see how they would view the jewel of his collection--an
+Israels whose price he had watched ascending till he was now almost
+certain it had reached top value, and would be better on the market
+again.  They did not view it at all.  This was a shock; and yet to have
+in Annette a virgin taste to form would be better than to have the silly,
+half-baked predilections of the English middle-class to deal with.  At
+the end of the gallery was a Meissonier of which he was rather ashamed
+--Meissonier was so steadily going down.  Madame Lamotte stopped before
+it.
+
+"Meissonier!  Ah! What a jewel!"  Soames took advantage of that moment.
+Very gently touching Annette's arm, he said:
+
+"How do you like my place, Annette?"
+
+She did not shrink, did not respond; she looked at him full, looked down,
+and murmured:
+
+"Who would not like it?  It is so beautiful!"
+
+"Perhaps some day--" Soames said, and stopped.
+
+So pretty she was, so self-possessed--she frightened him.  Those
+cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate
+curves--she was a standing temptation to indiscretion!  No!  No! One must
+be sure of one's ground--much surer!  'If I hold off,' he thought, 'it
+will tantalise her.'  And he crossed over to Madame Lamotte, who was
+still in front of the Meissonier.
+
+"Yes, that's quite a good example of his later work.  You must come
+again, Madame, and see them lighted up.  You must both come and spend a
+night."
+
+Enchanted, would it not be beautiful to see them lighted?  By moonlight
+too, the river must be ravishing!
+
+Annette murmured:
+
+"Thou art sentimental, Maman!"
+
+Sentimental!  That black-robed, comely, substantial Frenchwoman of the
+world!  And suddenly he was certain as he could be that there was no
+sentiment in either of them.  All the better.  Of what use sentiment?
+And yet....!
+
+He drove to the station with them, and saw them into the train.  To the
+tightened pressure of his hand it seemed that Annette's fingers responded
+just a little; her face smiled at him through the dark.
+
+He went back to the carriage, brooding.  "Go on home, Jordan," he said to
+the coachman; "I'll walk."  And he strode out into the darkening lanes,
+caution and the desire of possession playing see-saw within him.  'Bon
+soir, monsieur!'  How softly she had said it.  To know what was in her
+mind!  The French--they were like cats--one could tell nothing!  But--how
+pretty!  What a perfect young thing to hold in one's arms!  What a mother
+for his heir! And he thought, with a smile, of his family and their
+surprise at a French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would
+play with it and buffet it confound them!
+
+The, poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted.  Shadows deepened in
+the water.  'I will and must be free,' he thought.  'I won't hang about
+any longer.  I'll go and see Irene.  If you want things done, do them
+yourself.  I must live again--live and move and have my being.'  And in
+echo to that queer biblicality church-bells chimed the call to evening
+prayer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AND VISITS THE PAST
+
+On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do what
+required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything he had yet
+undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one other action.  He
+chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene was more likely to be in,
+but mainly because he had failed to find sufficient resolution by
+daylight, had needed wine to give him extra daring.
+
+He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old Church,
+uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived. He found it
+hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read the name, 'Mrs.
+Irene Heron'--Heron, forsooth!  Her maiden name: so she used that again,
+did she?--he stepped back into the road to look up at the windows of the
+first floor.  Light was coming through in the corner fiat, and he could
+hear a piano being played. He had never had a love of music, had secretly
+borne it a grudge in the old days when so often she had turned to her
+piano, making of it a refuge place into which she knew he could not
+enter.  Repulse! The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at
+last open! Bitter memory came with that sound.  It must be she playing,
+and thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more undecided than ever.
+Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his tongue felt dry, his heart
+beat fast.  'I have no cause to be afraid,' he thought.  And then the
+lawyer stirred within him.  Was he doing a foolish thing?  Ought he not
+to have arranged a formal meeting in the presence of her trustee?  No!
+Not before that fellow Jolyon, who sympathised with her!  Never!  He
+crossed back into the doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of
+his heart, mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell.  When
+the door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by the scent
+which came--that perfume--from away back in the past, bringing muffled
+remembrance: fragrance of a drawing-room he used to enter, of a house he
+used to own--perfume of dried rose-leaves and honey!
+
+"Say, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "your mistress will see me, I know." He had
+thought this out; she would think it was Jolyon!
+
+When the maid was gone and he was alone in the tiny hall, where the light
+was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls, carpet, everything was
+silvery, making the walled-in space all ghostly, he could only think
+ridiculously: 'Shall I go in with my overcoat on, or take it off?' The
+music ceased; the maid said from the doorway:
+
+"Will you walk in, sir?"
+
+Soames walked in.  He noted mechanically that all was still silvery, and
+that the upright piano was of satinwood.  She had risen and stood
+recoiled against it; her hand, placed on the keys as if groping for
+support, had struck a sudden discord, held for a moment, and released.
+The light from the shaded piano-candle fell on her neck, leaving her face
+rather in shadow.  She was in a black evening dress, with a sort of
+mantilla over her shoulders--he did not remember ever having seen her in
+black, and the thought passed through him: 'She dresses even when she's
+alone.'
+
+"You!" he heard her whisper.
+
+Many times Soames had rehearsed this scene in fancy.  Rehearsal served
+him not at all.  He simply could not speak.  He had never thought that
+the sight of this woman whom he had once so passionately desired, so
+completely owned, and whom he had not seen for twelve years, could affect
+him in this way.  He had imagined himself speaking and acting, half as
+man of business, half as judge.  And now it was as if he were in the
+presence not of a mere woman and erring wife, but of some force, subtle
+and elusive as atmosphere itself within him and outside.  A kind of
+defensive irony welled up in him.
+
+"Yes, it's a queer visit!  I hope you're well."
+
+"Thank you.  Will you sit down?"
+
+She had moved away from the piano, and gone over to a window-seat,
+sinking on to it, with her hands clasped in her lap.  Light fell on her
+there, so that Soames could see her face, eyes, hair, strangely as he
+remembered them, strangely beautiful.
+
+He sat down on the edge of a satinwood chair, upholstered with
+silver-coloured stuff, close to where he was standing.
+
+"You have not changed," he said.
+
+"No?  What have you come for?"
+
+"To discuss things."
+
+"I have heard what you want from your cousin."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I am willing.  I have always been."
+
+The sound of her voice, reserved and close, the sight of her figure
+watchfully poised, defensive, was helping him now.  A thousand memories
+of her, ever on the watch against him, stirred, and....
+
+"Perhaps you will be good enough, then, to give me information on which I
+can act.  The law must be complied with."
+
+"I have none to give you that you don't know of."
+
+"Twelve years!  Do you suppose I can believe that?"
+
+"I don't suppose you will believe anything I say; but it's the truth."
+
+Soames looked at her hard.  He had said that she had not changed; now he
+perceived that she had.  Not in face, except that it was more beautiful;
+not in form, except that it was a little fuller--no!  She had changed
+spiritually.  There was more of her, as it were, something of activity
+and daring, where there had been sheer passive resistance.  'Ah!' he
+thought, 'that's her independent income!  Confound Uncle Jolyon!'
+
+"I suppose you're comfortably off now?" he said.
+
+"Thank you, yes."
+
+"Why didn't you let me provide for you?  I would have, in spite of
+everything."
+
+A faint smile came on her lips; but she did not answer.
+
+"You are still my wife," said Soames.  Why he said that, what he meant by
+it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after.  It was a truism almost
+preposterous, but its effect was startling.  She rose from the
+window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly still, looking at him.  He
+could see her bosom heaving.  Then she turned to the window and threw it
+open.
+
+"Why do that?" he said sharply.  "You'll catch cold in that dress. I'm
+not dangerous."  And he uttered a little sad laugh.
+
+She echoed it--faintly, bitterly.
+
+"It was--habit."
+
+"Rather odd habit," said Soames as bitterly.  "Shut the window!"
+
+She shut it and sat down again.  She had developed power, this
+woman--this--wife of his!  He felt it issuing from her as she sat there,
+in a sort of armour.  And almost unconsciously he rose and moved nearer;
+he wanted to see the expression on her face.  Her eyes met his
+unflinching.  Heavens! how clear they were, and what a dark brown against
+that white skin, and that burnt-amber hair! And how white her shoulders.
+
+Funny sensation this!  He ought to hate her.
+
+"You had better tell me," he said; "it's to your advantage to be free as
+well as to mine.  That old matter is too old."
+
+"I have told you."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me there has been nothing--nobody?"
+
+"Nobody.  You must go to your own life."
+
+Stung by that retort, Soames moved towards the piano and back to the
+hearth, to and fro, as he had been wont in the old days in their
+drawing-room when his feelings were too much for him.
+
+"That won't do," he said.  "You deserted me.  In common justice it's for
+you...."
+
+He saw her shrug those white shoulders, heard her murmur:
+
+"Yes.  Why didn't you divorce me then?  Should I have cared?"
+
+He stopped, and looked at her intently with a sort of curiosity. What on
+earth did she do with herself, if she really lived quite alone?  And why
+had he not divorced her?  The old feeling that she had never understood
+him, never done him justice, bit him while he stared at her.
+
+"Why couldn't you have made me a good wife?" he said.
+
+"Yes; it was a crime to marry you.  I have paid for it.  You will find
+some way perhaps.  You needn't mind my name, I have none to lose.  Now I
+think you had better go."
+
+A sense of defeat--of being defrauded of his self-justification, and of
+something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset Soames like
+the breath of a cold fog.  Mechanically he reached up, took from the
+mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, and said:
+
+"Lowestoft.  Where did you get this?  I bought its fellow at Jobson's."
+And, visited by the sudden memory of how, those many years ago, he and
+she had bought china together, he remained staring at the little bowl, as
+if it contained all the past.  Her voice roused him.
+
+"Take it.  I don't want it."
+
+Soames put it back on the shelf.
+
+"Will you shake hands?" he said.
+
+A faint smile curved her lips.  She held out her hand.  It was cold to
+his rather feverish touch.  'She's made of ice,' he thought--'she was
+always made of ice!'  But even as that thought darted through him, his
+senses were assailed by the perfume of her dress and body, as though the
+warmth within her, which had never been for him, were struggling to show
+its presence.  And he turned on his heel.  He walked out and away, as if
+someone with a whip were after him, not even looking for a cab, glad of
+the empty Embankment and the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows of
+the plane-tree leaves--confused, flurried, sore at heart, and vaguely
+disturbed, as though he had made some deep mistake whose consequences he
+could not foresee.  And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him if
+instead of, 'I think you had better go,' she had said, 'I think you had
+better stay!'  What should he have felt, what would he have done?  That
+cursed attraction of her was there for him even now, after all these
+years of estrangement and bitter thoughts.  It was there, ready to mount
+to his head at a sign, a touch.  'I was a fool to go!'  he muttered.
+'I've advanced nothing.  Who could imagine?  I never thought!'  Memory,
+flown back to the first years of his marriage, played him torturing
+tricks.  She had not deserved to keep her beauty--the beauty he had owned
+and known so well.  And a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of his own
+admiration welled up in him.  Most men would have hated the sight of her,
+as she had deserved.  She had spoiled his life, wounded his pride to
+death, defrauded him of a son.  And yet the mere sight of her, cold and
+resisting as ever, had this power to upset him utterly!  It was some
+damned magnetism she had!  And no wonder if, as she asserted; she had
+lived untouched these last twelve years.  So Bosinney--cursed be his
+memory!--had lived on all this time with her!  Soames could not tell
+whether he was glad of that knowledge or no.
+
+Nearing his Club at last he stopped to buy a paper.  A headline ran:
+'Boers reported to repudiate suzerainty!'  Suzerainty!  'Just like her!'
+he thought: 'she always did.  Suzerainty!  I still have it by rights.
+She must be awfully lonely in that wretched little flat!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ON FORSYTE 'CHANGE
+
+Soames belonged to two clubs, 'The Connoisseurs,' which he put on his
+cards and seldom visited, and 'The Remove,' which he did not put on his
+cards and frequented.  He had joined this Liberal institution five years
+ago, having made sure that its members were now nearly all sound
+Conservatives in heart and pocket, if not in principle.  Uncle Nicholas
+had put him up.  The fine reading-room was decorated in the Adam style.
+
+On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news about the
+Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down seven-sixteenths since the
+morning.  He was turning away to seek the reading-room when a voice
+behind him said:
+
+"Well, Soames, that went off all right."
+
+It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away collar,
+with a black tie passed through a ring.  Heavens!  How young and dapper
+he looked at eighty-two!
+
+"I think Roger'd have been pleased," his uncle went on.  "The thing was
+very well done.  Blackley's?  I'll make a note of them. Buxton's done me
+no good.  These Boers are upsetting me--that fellow Chamberlain's driving
+the country into war.  What do you think?"
+
+"Bound to come," murmured Soames.
+
+Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, clean-shaven cheeks, very rosy
+after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his lips. This
+business had revived all his Liberal principles.
+
+"I mistrust that chap; he's a stormy petrel.  House-property will go down
+if there's war.  You'll have trouble with Roger's estate. I often told
+him he ought to get out of some of his houses.  He was an opinionated
+beggar."
+
+'There was a pair of you!' thought Soames.  But he never argued with an
+uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as 'a long-headed
+chap,' and the legal care of their property.
+
+"They tell me at Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice, "that
+Dartie has gone off at last.  That'll be a relief to your father.  He was
+a rotten egg."
+
+Again Soames nodded.  If there was a subject on which the Forsytes really
+agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.
+
+"You take care," said Nicholas, "or he'll turn up again.  Winifred had
+better have the tooth out, I should say.  No use preserving what's gone
+bad."
+
+Soames looked at him sideways.  His nerves, exacerbated by the interview
+he had just come through, disposed him to see a personal allusion in
+those words.
+
+"I'm advising her," he said shortly.
+
+"Well," said Nicholas, "the brougham's waiting; I must get home. I'm very
+poorly.  Remember me to your father."
+
+And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down the steps
+at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat by the junior
+porter.
+
+'I've never known Uncle Nicholas other than "very poorly,"' mused Soames,
+'or seen him look other than everlasting.  What a family! Judging by him,
+I've got thirty-eight years of health before me. Well, I'm not going to
+waste them.'  And going over to a mirror he stood looking at his face.
+Except for a line or two, and three or four grey hairs in his little dark
+moustache, had he aged any more than Irene?  The prime of life--he and
+she in the very prime of life!  And a fantastic thought shot into his
+mind.  Absurd! Idiotic!  But again it came.  And genuinely alarmed by the
+recurrence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which presages a
+feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine.  Eleven stone! He had
+not varied two pounds in twenty years.  What age was she? Nearly
+thirty-seven--not too old to have a child--not at all! Thirty-seven on
+the ninth of next month.  He remembered her birthday well--he had always
+observed it religiously, even that last birthday so soon before she left
+him, when he was almost certain she was faithless.  Four birthdays in his
+house.  He had looked forward to them, because his gifts had meant a
+semblance of gratitude, a certain attempt at warmth.  Except, indeed,
+that last birthday--which had tempted him to be too religious!  And he
+shied away in thought.  Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds,
+from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.  And then he
+thought suddenly: 'I could send her a present for her birthday. After
+all, we're Christians!  Couldn't!--couldn't we join up again!'  And he
+uttered a deep sigh sitting there.  Annette!  Ah! but between him and
+Annette was the need for that wretched divorce suit!  And how?
+
+"A man can always work these things, if he'll take it on himself," Jolyon
+had said.
+
+But why should he take the scandal on himself with his whole career as a
+pillar of the law at stake?  It was not fair!  It was quixotic!  Twelve
+years' separation in which he had taken no steps to free himself put out
+of court the possibility of using her conduct with Bosinney as a ground
+for divorcing her.  By doing nothing to secure relief he had acquiesced,
+even if the evidence could now be gathered, which was more than doubtful.
+Besides, his own pride would never let him use that old incident, he had
+suffered from it too much.  No!  Nothing but fresh misconduct on her
+part--but she had denied it; and--almost--he had believed her.  Hung up!
+Utterly hung up!
+
+He rose from the scooped-out red velvet seat with a feeling of
+constriction about his vitals.  He would never sleep with this going on
+in him!  And, taking coat and hat again, he went out, moving eastward.
+In Trafalgar Square he became aware of some special commotion travelling
+towards him out of the mouth of the Strand.  It materialised in newspaper
+men calling out so loudly that no words whatever could be heard.  He
+stopped to listen, and one came by.
+
+"Payper!  Special!  Ultimatium by Krooger!  Declaration of war!" Soames
+bought the paper.  There it was in the stop press....!  His first thought
+was: 'The Boers are committing suicide.'  His second: 'Is there anything
+still I ought to sell?' If so he had missed the chance--there would
+certainly be a slump in the city to-morrow.  He swallowed this thought
+with a nod of defiance.  That ultimatum was insolent--sooner than let it
+pass he was prepared to lose money. They wanted a lesson, and they would
+get it; but it would take three months at least to bring them to heel.
+There weren't the troops out there; always behind time, the Government!
+Confound those newspaper rats!  What was the use of waking everybody up?
+Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough.  And he thought with alarm of
+his father.  They would cry it down Park Lane.  Hailing a hansom, he got
+in and told the man to drive there.
+
+James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating the news
+to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow.  He paused by after-thought to
+say:
+
+"What do you think of it, Warmson?"
+
+The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames had taken
+off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in a low voice:
+"Well, sir, they 'aven't a chance, of course; but I'm told they're very
+good shots.  I've got a son in the Inniskillings."
+
+"You, Warmson?  Why, I didn't know you were married."
+
+"No, sir.  I don't talk of it.  I expect he'll be going out."
+
+The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so little
+of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the slight shock of
+discovering that the war might touch one personally.  Born in the year of
+the Crimean War, he had only come to consciousness by the time the Indian
+Mutiny was over; since then the many little wars of the British Empire
+had been entirely professional, quite unconnected with the Forsytes and
+all they stood for in the body politic.  This war would surely be no
+exception.  But his mind ran hastily over his family.  Two of the
+Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other--it had always been
+a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction about the Yeomanry;
+they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform with silver about it, and rode
+horses.  And Archibald, he remembered, had once on a time joined the
+Militia, but had given it up because his father, Nicholas, had made such
+a fuss about his 'wasting his time peacocking about in a uniform.'
+Recently he had heard somewhere that young Nicholas' eldest, very young
+Nicholas, had become a Volunteer.  'No,' thought Soames, mounting the
+stairs slowly, 'there's nothing in that!'
+
+He stood on the landing outside his parents' bed and dressing rooms,
+debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a reassuring word.
+Opening the landing window, he listened.  The rumble from Piccadilly was
+all the sound he heard, and with the thought, 'If these motor-cars
+increase, it'll affect house property,' he was about to pass on up to the
+room always kept ready for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse
+rushing call of a newsvendor.  There it was, and coming past the house!
+He knocked on his mother's door and went in.
+
+His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the white
+hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut.  He looked pink, and
+extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and pillow, out of
+which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned shoulders emerged in
+small peaks.  His eyes alone, grey and distrustful under their withered
+lids, were moving from the window to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking
+up and down, squeezing a rubber ball attached to a scent bottle.  The
+room reeked faintly of the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.
+
+"All right!" said Soames, "it's not a fire.  The Boers have declared
+war--that's all."
+
+Emily stopped her spraying.
+
+"Oh!" was all she said, and looked at James.
+
+Soames, too, looked at his father.  He was taking it differently from
+their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were working in
+him.
+
+"H'm!" he muttered suddenly, "I shan't live to see the end of this."
+
+"Nonsense, James!  It'll be over by Christmas."
+
+"What do you know about it?" James answered her with asperity. "It's a
+pretty mess at this time of night, too!"  He lapsed into silence, and his
+wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him to say: 'I can't tell--I
+don't know; I knew how it would be!'  But he did not.  The grey eyes
+shifted, evidently seeing nothing in the room; then movement occurred
+under the bedclothes, and the knees were drawn up suddenly to a great
+height.
+
+"They ought to send out Roberts.  It all comes from that fellow Gladstone
+and his Majuba."
+
+The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
+something of real anxiety.  It was as if he had said: 'I shall never see
+the old country peaceful and safe again.  I shall have to die before I
+know she's won.'  And in spite of the feeling that James must not be
+encouraged to be fussy, they were touched. Soames went up to the bedside
+and stroked his father's hand which had emerged from under the
+bedclothes, long and wrinkled with veins.
+
+"Mark my words!" said James, "consols will go to par.  For all I know,
+Val may go and enlist."
+
+"Oh, come, James!" cried Emily, "you talk as if there were danger."
+
+Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.
+
+"Well," he muttered, "I told you how it would be.  I don't know, I'm
+sure--nobody tells me anything.  Are you sleeping here, my boy?"
+
+The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal degree of
+anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping in the house,
+Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.
+
+The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy's had known
+for many a year.  On national occasions, such as this, it was, indeed,
+almost impossible to avoid going there.  Not that there was any danger or
+rather only just enough to make it necessary to assure each other that
+there was none.
+
+Nicholas was there early.  He had seen Soames the night before--Soames
+had said it was bound to come.  This old Kruger was in his dotage--why,
+he must be seventy-five if he was a day!
+
+(Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said?  He had had a fit after
+Majuba.  These Boers were a grasping lot!  The dark-haired Francie, who
+had arrived on his heels, with the contradictious touch which became the
+free spirit of a daughter of Roger, chimed in:
+
+"Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas.  What price the Uitlanders?" What price,
+indeed!  A new expression, and believed to be due to her brother George.
+
+Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing.  Dear Mrs.
+MacAnder's boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could call him
+grasping.  At this Francie uttered one of her mots, scandalising, and so
+frequently repeated:
+
+"Well, his father's a Scotchman, and his mother's a cat."
+
+Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as for
+Nicholas, he pouted--witticism of which he was not the author was hardly
+to his taste.  Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived, followed almost
+immediately by young Nicholas.  On seeing his son, Nicholas rose.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said, "Nick here will tell you what'll win
+the race."  And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a pillar of
+accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was no more addicted
+to sport than his father had ever been, he departed.  Dear Nicholas!
+What race was that?  Or was it only one of his jokes? He was a wonderful
+man for his age!  How many lumps would dear Marian take?  And how were
+Giles and Jesse?  Aunt Juley supposed their Yeomanry would be very busy
+now, guarding the coast, though of course the Boers had no ships.  But
+one never knew what the French might do if they had the chance,
+especially since that dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so
+terribly that he had made no investments for months afterwards.  It was
+the ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after everything had
+been done for them--Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he was so nice, Mrs.
+MacAnder had always said.  And Sir Alfred Milner sent out to talk to
+them--such a clever man!  She didn't know what they wanted.
+
+But at this moment occurred one of those sensations--so precious at
+Timothy's--which great occasions sometimes bring forth:
+
+"Miss June Forsyte."
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
+smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at the
+return of a prodigal June!  Well, this was a surprise!  Dear June--after
+all these years!  And how well she was looking!  Not changed at all!  It
+was almost on their lips to add, 'And how is your dear grandfather?'
+forgetting in that giddy moment that poor dear Jolyon had been in his
+grave for seven years now.
+
+Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June, with
+her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like flame, sat down,
+slight and short, on a gilt chair with a bead-worked seat, for all the
+world as if ten years had not elapsed since she had been to see them--ten
+years of travel and independence and devotion to lame ducks.  Those ducks
+of late had been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that
+her impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic outlook
+had become intense.  Indeed, she had almost ceased to believe that her
+family existed, and looked round her now with a sort of challenging
+directness which brought exquisite discomfort to the roomful.  She had
+not expected to meet any of them but 'the poor old things'; and why she
+had come to see them she hardly knew, except that, while on her way from
+Oxford Street to a studio in Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered
+them with compunction as two long-neglected old lame ducks.
+
+Aunt Juley broke the hush again.  "We've just been saying, dear, how
+dreadful it is about these Boers!  And what an impudent thing of that old
+Kruger!"
+
+"Impudent!" said June.  "I think he's quite right.  What business have we
+to meddle with them?  If he turned out all those wretched Uitlanders it
+would serve them right.  They're only after money."
+
+The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:
+
+"What?  Are you a pro-Boer?" (undoubtedly the first use of that
+expression).
+
+"Well!  Why can't we leave them alone?" said June, just as, in the open
+doorway, the maid said "Mr. Soames Forsyte."  Sensation on sensation!
+Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how June and he would
+take this encounter, for it was shrewdly suspected, if not quite known,
+that they had not met since that old and lamentable affair of her fiance
+Bosinney with Soames' wife. They were seen to just touch each other's
+hands, and look each at the other's left eye only.  Aunt Juley came at
+once to the rescue:
+
+"Dear June is so original.  Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers are not
+to blame."
+
+"They only want their independence," said June; "and why shouldn't they
+have it?"
+
+"Because," answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side, "they
+happen to have agreed to our suzerainty."
+
+"Suzerainty!" repeated June scornfully; "we shouldn't like anyone's
+suzerainty over us."
+
+"They got advantages in payment," replied Soames; "a contract is a
+contract."
+
+"Contracts are not always just," fumed out June, "and when they're not,
+they ought to be broken.  The Boers are much the weaker.  We could afford
+to be generous."
+
+Soames sniffed.  "That's mere sentiment," he said.
+
+Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
+disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:
+
+"What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?"
+
+But June was not to be diverted.
+
+"I don't know why sentiment should be sneered at.  It's the best thing in
+the world."  She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley had to intervene
+again:
+
+"Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?"
+
+Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed her.
+Soames flushed.  To disclose the name of his latest purchases would be
+like walking into the jaws of disdain.  For somehow they all knew of
+June's predilection for 'genius' not yet on its legs, and her contempt
+for 'success' unless she had had a finger in securing it.
+
+"One or two," he muttered.
+
+But June's face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing its
+chance.  Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of Eric
+Cobbley--her last lame duck?  And she promptly opened her attack: Did
+Soames know his work?  It was so wonderful.  He was the coming man.
+
+Oh, yes, Soames knew his work.  It was in his view 'splashy,' and would
+never get hold of the public.
+
+June blazed up.
+
+"Of course it won't; that's the last thing one would wish for.  I thought
+you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer."
+
+"Of course Soames is a connoisseur," Aunt Juley said hastily; "he has
+wonderful taste--he can always tell beforehand what's going to be
+successful."
+
+"Oh!" gasped June, and sprang up from the bead-covered chair, "I hate
+that standard of success.  Why can't people buy things because they like
+them?"
+
+"You mean," said Francie, "because you like them."
+
+And in the slight pause young Nicholas was heard saying gently that
+Violet (his fourth) was taking lessons in pastel, he didn't know if they
+were any use.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Auntie," said June; "I must get on," and kissing her
+aunts, she looked defiantly round the room, said "Good-bye" again, and
+went.  A breeze seemed to pass out with her, as if everyone had sighed.
+
+The third sensation came before anyone had time to speak:
+
+"Mr. James Forsyte."
+
+James came in using a stick slightly and wrapped in a fur coat which gave
+him a fictitious bulk.
+
+Everyone stood up.  James was so old; and he had not been at Timothy's
+for nearly two years.
+
+"It's hot in here," he said.
+
+Soames divested him of his coat, and as he did so could not help admiring
+the glossy way his father was turned out.  James sat down, all knees,
+elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.
+
+"What's the meaning of that?" he said.
+
+Though there was no apparent sense in his words, they all knew that he
+was referring to June.  His eyes searched his son's face.
+
+"I thought I'd come and see for myself.  What have they answered Kruger?"
+
+Soames took out an evening paper, and read the headline.
+
+"'Instant action by our Government--state of war existing!'"
+
+"Ah!" said James, and sighed.  "I was afraid they'd cut and run like old
+Gladstone.  We shall finish with them this time."
+
+All stared at him.  James!  Always fussy, nervous, anxious!  James with
+his continual, 'I told you how it would be!' and his pessimism, and his
+cautious investments.  There was something uncanny about such resolution
+in this the oldest living Forsyte.
+
+"Where's Timothy?" said James.  "He ought to pay attention to this."
+
+Aunt Juley said she didn't know; Timothy had not said much at lunch
+to-day.  Aunt Hester rose and threaded her way out of the room, and
+Francie said rather maliciously:
+
+"The Boers are a hard nut to crack, Uncle James."
+
+"H'm!" muttered James.  "Where do you get your information?  Nobody tells
+me."
+
+Young Nicholas remarked in his mild voice that Nick (his eldest) was now
+going to drill regularly.
+
+"Ah!" muttered James, and stared before him--his thoughts were on Val.
+"He's got to look after his mother," he said, "he's got no time for
+drilling and that, with that father of his."  This cryptic saying
+produced silence, until he spoke again.
+
+"What did June want here?"  And his eyes rested with suspicion on all of
+them in turn.  "Her father's a rich man now."  The conversation turned on
+Jolyon, and when he had been seen last.  It was supposed that he went
+abroad and saw all sorts of people now that his wife was dead; his
+water-colours were on the line, and he was a successful man.  Francie
+went so far as to say:
+
+"I should like to see him again; he was rather a dear."
+
+Aunt Juley recalled how he had gone to sleep on the sofa one day, where
+James was sitting.  He had always been very amiable; what did Soames
+think?
+
+Knowing that Jolyon was Irene's trustee, all felt the delicacy of this
+question, and looked at Soames with interest.  A faint pink had come up
+in his cheeks.
+
+"He's going grey," he said.
+
+Indeed!  Had Soames seen him?  Soames nodded, and the pink vanished.
+
+James said suddenly: "Well--I don't know, I can't tell."
+
+It so exactly expressed the sentiment of everybody present that there was
+something behind everything, that nobody responded.  But at this moment
+Aunt Hester returned.
+
+"Timothy," she said in a low voice, "Timothy has bought a map, and he's
+put in--he's put in three flags."
+
+Timothy had ....!  A sigh went round the company.
+
+If Timothy had indeed put in three flags already, well!--it showed what
+the nation could do when it was roused.  The war was as good as over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JOLYON FINDS OUT WHERE HE IS
+
+Jolyon stood at the window in Holly's old night nursery, converted into a
+studio, not because it had a north light, but for its view over the
+prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom.  He shifted to the side window
+which overlooked the stableyard, and whistled down to the dog Balthasar
+who lay for ever under the clock tower.  The old dog looked up and wagged
+his tail.  'Poor old boy!'  thought Jolyon, shifting back to the other
+window.
+
+He had been restless all this week, since his attempt to prosecute
+trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever acute, disturbed in
+his sense of compassion which was easily excited, and with a queer
+sensation as if his feeling for beauty had received some definite
+embodiment.  Autumn was getting hold of the old oak-tree, its leaves were
+browning.  Sunshine had been plentiful and hot this summer.  As with
+trees, so with men's lives!  'I ought to live long,' thought Jolyon; 'I'm
+getting mildewed for want of heat.  If I can't work, I shall be off to
+Paris.'  But memory of Paris gave him no pleasure.  Besides, how could he
+go?  He must stay and see what Soames was going to do.  'I'm her trustee.
+I can't leave her unprotected,' he thought.  It had been striking him as
+curious how very clearly he could still see Irene in her little
+drawing-room which he had only twice entered.  Her beauty must have a
+sort of poignant harmony!  No literal portrait would ever do her justice;
+the essence of her was--ah I what?...  The noise of hoofs called him back
+to the other window.  Holly was riding into the yard on her long-tailed
+'palfrey.'  She looked up and he waved to her.  She had been rather
+silent lately; getting old, he supposed, beginning to want her future, as
+they all did--youngsters!
+
+Time was certainly the devil!  And with the feeling that to waste this
+swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took up his brush.
+But it was no use; he could not concentrate his eye--besides, the light
+was going.  'I'll go up to town,' he thought. In the hall a servant met
+him.
+
+"A lady to see you, sir; Mrs. Heron."
+
+Extraordinary coincidence!  Passing into the picture-gallery, as it was
+still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window.
+
+She came towards him saying:
+
+"I've been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden. I
+always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon."
+
+"You couldn't trespass here," replied Jolyon; "history makes that
+impossible.  I was just thinking of you."
+
+Irene smiled.  And it was as if something shone through; not mere
+spirituality--serener, completer, more alluring.
+
+"History!" she answered; "I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was for
+ever.  Well, it isn't.  Only aversion lasts."
+
+Jolyon stared at her.  Had she got over Bosinney at last?
+
+"Yes!" he said, "aversion's deeper than love or hate because it's a
+natural product of the nerves, and we don't change them."
+
+"I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me.  He said a thing that
+frightened me.  He said: 'You are still my wife!'"
+
+"What!" ejaculated Jolyon.  "You ought not to live alone."  And he
+continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where Beauty
+was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was why so many
+people looked on it as immoral.
+
+"What more?"
+
+"He asked me to shake hands.
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes.  When he came in I'm sure he didn't want to; he changed while he
+was there."
+
+"Ah! you certainly ought not to go on living there alone."
+
+"I know no woman I could ask; and I can't take a lover to order, Cousin
+Jolyon."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Jolyon.  "What a damnable position!  Will you stay
+to dinner?  No?  Well, let me see you back to town; I wanted to go up
+this evening."
+
+"Truly?"
+
+"Truly.  I'll be ready in five minutes."
+
+On that walk to the station they talked of pictures and music,
+contrasting the English and French characters and the difference in their
+attitude to Art.  But to Jolyon the colours in the hedges of the long
+straight lane, the twittering of chaffinches who kept pace with them, the
+perfume of weeds being already burned, the turn of her neck, the
+fascination of those dark eyes bent on him now and then, the lure of her
+whole figure, made a deeper impression than the remarks they exchanged.
+Unconsciously he held himself straighter, walked with a more elastic
+step.
+
+In the train he put her through a sort of catechism as to what she did
+with her days.
+
+Made her dresses, shopped, visited a hospital, played her piano,
+translated from the French.
+
+She had regular work from a publisher, it seemed, which supplemented her
+income a little.  She seldom went out in the evening.  "I've been living
+alone so long, you see, that I don't mind it a bit.  I believe I'm
+naturally solitary."
+
+"I don't believe that," said Jolyon.  "Do you know many people?"
+
+"Very few."
+
+At Waterloo they took a hansom, and he drove with her to the door of her
+mansions.  Squeezing her hand at parting, he said:
+
+"You know, you could always come to us at Robin Hill; you must let me
+know everything that happens.  Good-bye, Irene."
+
+"Good-bye," she answered softly.
+
+Jolyon climbed back into his cab, wondering why he had not asked her to
+dine and go to the theatre with him.  Solitary, starved, hung-up life
+that she had!  "Hotch Potch Club," he said through the trap-door.  As his
+hansom debouched on to the Embankment, a man in top-hat and overcoat
+passed, walking quickly, so close to the wall that he seemed to be
+scraping it.
+
+'By Jove!' thought Jolyon; 'Soames himself!  What's he up to now?' And,
+stopping the cab round the corner, he got out and retraced his steps to
+where he could see the entrance to the mansions.  Soames had halted in
+front of them, and was looking up at the light in her windows.  'If he
+goes in,' thought Jolyon, 'what shall I do?  What have I the right to
+do?'  What the fellow had said was true.  She was still his wife,
+absolutely without protection from annoyance! 'Well, if he goes in,' he
+thought, 'I follow.'  And he began moving towards the mansions.  Again
+Soames advanced; he was in the very entrance now.  But suddenly he
+stopped, spun round on his heel, and came back towards the river.  'What
+now?' thought Jolyon.  'In a dozen steps he'll recognise me.'  And he
+turned tail.  His cousin's footsteps kept pace with his own.  But he
+reached his cab, and got in before Soames had turned the corner.  "Go
+on!" he said through the trap.  Soames' figure ranged up alongside.
+
+"Hansom!" he said.  "Engaged?  Hallo!"
+
+"Hallo!" answered Jolyon.  "You?"
+
+The quick suspicion on his cousin's face, white in the lamplight, decided
+him.
+
+"I can give you a lift," he said, "if you're going West."
+
+"Thanks," answered Soames, and got in.
+
+"I've been seeing Irene," said Jolyon when the cab had started.
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"You went to see her yesterday yourself, I understand."
+
+"I did," said Soames; "she's my wife, you know."
+
+The tone, the half-lifted sneering lip, roused sudden anger in Jolyon;
+but he subdued it.
+
+"You ought to know best," he said, "but if you want a divorce it's not
+very wise to go seeing her, is it?  One can't run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds?"
+
+"You're very good to warn me," said Soames, "but I have not made up my
+mind."
+
+"She has," said Jolyon, looking straight before him; "you can't take
+things up, you know, as they were twelve years ago."
+
+"That remains to be seen."
+
+"Look here!" said Jolyon, "she's in a damnable position, and I am the
+only person with any legal say in her affairs."
+
+"Except myself," retorted Soames, "who am also in a damnable position.
+Hers is what she made for herself; mine what she made for me.  I am not
+at all sure that in her own interests I shan't require her to return to
+me."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole body.
+
+"I don't know what you may mean by 'what,'" answered Soames coldly; "your
+say in her affairs is confined to paying out her income; please bear that
+in mind.  In choosing not to disgrace her by a divorce, I retained my
+rights, and, as I say, I am not at all sure that I shan't require to
+exercise them."
+
+"My God!" ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.
+
+"Yes," said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice. "I've
+not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, 'The man of property'!
+I'm not called names for nothing."
+
+"This is fantastic," murmured Jolyon.  Well, the fellow couldn't force
+his wife to live with him.  Those days were past, anyway! And he looked
+around at Soames with the thought: 'Is he real, this man?' But Soames
+looked very real, sitting square yet almost elegant with the clipped
+moustache on his pale face, and a tooth showing where a lip was lifted in
+a fixed smile.  There was a long silence, while Jolyon thought: 'Instead
+of helping her, I've made things worse.'  Suddenly Soames said:
+
+"It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many ways."
+
+At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that he could
+barely sit still in the cab.  It was as if he were boxed up with hundreds
+of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with that something in the
+national character which had always been to him revolting, something
+which he knew to be extremely natural and yet which seemed to him
+inexplicable--their intense belief in contracts and vested rights, their
+complacent sense of virtue in the exaction of those rights.  Here beside
+him in the cab was the very embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of
+the possessive instinct--his own kinsman, too!  It was uncanny and
+intolerable! 'But there's something more in it than that!' he thought
+with a sick feeling.  'The dog, they say, returns to his vomit!  The
+sight of her has reawakened something.  Beauty!  The devil's in it!'
+
+"As I say," said Soames, "I have not made up my mind.  I shall be obliged
+if you will kindly leave her quite alone."
+
+Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed the
+thought of one now.
+
+"I can give you no such promise," he said shortly.
+
+"Very well," said Soames, "then we know where we are.  I'll get down
+here."  And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign of farewell.
+Jolyon travelled on to his Club.
+
+The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he paid no
+attention.  What could he do to help her?  If only his father were alive!
+He could have done so much!  But why could he not do all that his father
+could have done?  Was he not old enough?--turned fifty and twice married,
+with grown-up daughters and a son.  'Queer,' he thought.  'If she were
+plain I shouldn't be thinking twice about it.  Beauty is the devil, when
+you're sensitive to it!'  And into the Club reading-room he went with a
+disturbed heart.  In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one summer
+afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and secret lecture
+he had given that young man in the interests of June, the diagnosis of
+the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he had wondered what sort of woman
+it was he was warning him against.  And now!  He was almost in want of a
+warning himself.  'It's deuced funny!'  he thought, 'really deuced
+funny!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOAMES DISCOVERS WHAT HE WANTS
+
+It is so much easier to say, "Then we know where we are," than to mean
+anything particular by the words.  And in saying them Soames did but vent
+the jealous rankling of his instincts.  He got out of the cab in a state
+of wary anger--with himself for not having seen Irene, with Jolyon for
+having seen her; and now with his inability to tell exactly what he
+wanted.
+
+He had abandoned the cab because he could not bear to remain seated
+beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he thought: 'I wouldn't
+trust that fellow Jolyon a yard.  Once outcast, always outcast!'  The
+chap had a natural sympathy with--with--laxity (he had shied at the word
+sin, because it was too melodramatic for use by a Forsyte).
+
+Indecision in desire was to him a new feeling.  He was like a child
+between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken away from him;
+and he was astonished at himself.  Only last Sunday desire had seemed
+simple--just his freedom and Annette.  'I'll go and dine there,' he
+thought.  To see her might bring back his singleness of intention, calm
+his exasperation, clear his mind.
+
+The restaurant was fairly full--a good many foreigners and folk whom,
+from their appearance, he took to be literary or artistic. Scraps of
+conversation came his way through the clatter of plates and glasses.  He
+distinctly heard the Boers sympathised with, the British Government
+blamed.  'Don't think much of their clientele,' he thought.  He went
+stolidly through his dinner and special coffee without making his
+presence known, and when at last he had finished, was careful not to be
+seen going towards the sanctum of Madame Lamotte.  They were, as he
+entered, having supper--such a much nicer-looking supper than the dinner
+he had eaten that he felt a kind of grief--and they greeted him with a
+surprise so seemingly genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: 'I
+believe they knew I was here all the time.'  He gave Annette a look
+furtive and searching.  So pretty, seemingly so candid; could she be
+angling for him?  He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:
+
+"I've been dining here."
+
+Really!  If she had only known!  There were dishes she could have
+recommended; what a pity!  Soames was confirmed in his suspicion. 'I must
+look out what I'm doing!' he thought sharply.
+
+"Another little cup of very special coffee, monsieur; a liqueur, Grand
+Marnier?" and Madame Lamotte rose to order these delicacies.
+
+Alone with Annette Soames said, "Well, Annette?" with a defensive little
+smile about his lips.
+
+The girl blushed.  This, which last Sunday would have set his nerves
+tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has when a dog that he
+owns wriggles and looks at him.  He had a curious sense of power, as if
+he could have said to her, 'Come and kiss me,' and she would have come.
+And yet--it was strange--but there seemed another face and form in the
+room too; and the itch in his nerves, was it for that--or for this?  He
+jerked his head towards the restaurant and said: "You have some queer
+customers.  Do you like this life?"
+
+Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with her
+fork.
+
+"No," she said, "I do not like it."
+
+'I've got her,' thought Soames, 'if I want her.  But do I want her?' She
+was graceful, she was pretty--very pretty; she was fresh, she had taste
+of a kind.  His eyes travelled round the little room; but the eyes of his
+mind went another journey--a half-light, and silvery walls, a satinwood
+piano, a woman standing against it, reined back as it were from him--a
+woman with white shoulders that he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought
+to know, and hair like dull dark amber.  And as in an artist who strives
+for the unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him at that
+moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.
+
+"Well," he said calmly, "you're young.  There's everything before you."
+
+Annette shook her head.
+
+"I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work.  I am not so
+in love with work as mother."
+
+"Your mother is a wonder," said Soames, faintly mocking; "she will never
+let failure lodge in her house."
+
+Annette sighed.  "It must be wonderful to be rich."
+
+"Oh!  You'll be rich some day," answered Soames, still with that faint
+mockery; "don't be afraid."
+
+Annette shrugged her shoulders.  "Monsieur is very kind."  And between
+her pouting lips she put a chocolate.
+
+'Yes, my dear,' thought Soames, 'they're very pretty.'
+
+Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that colloquy.
+Soames did not stay long.
+
+Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a feeling of
+property improperly owned, he mused.  If only Irene had given him a son,
+he wouldn't now be squirming after women!  The thought had jumped out of
+its little dark sentry-box in his inner consciousness.  A son--something
+to look forward to, something to make the rest of life worth while,
+something to leave himself to, some perpetuity of self.  'If I had a
+son,' he thought bitterly, 'a proper legal son, I could make shift to go
+on as I used.  One woman's much the same as another, after all.'  But as
+he walked he shook his head.  No!  One woman was not the same as another.
+Many a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted
+married life; and he had always failed.  He was failing now.  He was
+trying to think Annette the same as that other.  But she was not, she had
+not the lure of that old passion.  'And Irene's my wife,' he thought, 'my
+legal wife.  I have done nothing to put her away from me.  Why shouldn't
+she come back to me?  It's the right thing, the lawful thing.  It makes
+no scandal, no disturbance.  If it's disagreeable to her--but why should
+it be?  I'm not a leper, and she--she's no longer in love!'  Why should
+he be put to the shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats
+of the Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting
+to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her? To
+one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet possession
+of his own property with nothing given away to the world was intensely
+alluring.  'No,' he mused, 'I'm glad I went to see that girl.  I know now
+what I want most.  If only Irene will come back I'll be as considerate as
+she wishes; she could live her own life; but perhaps--perhaps she would
+come round to me.'  There was a lump in his throat.  And doggedly along
+by the railings of the Green Park, towards his father's house, he went,
+trying to tread on his shadow walking before him in the brilliant
+moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE THIRD GENERATION
+
+Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November
+afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up.  Jolly had just changed out of
+boating flannels and was on his way to the 'Frying-pan,' to which he had
+recently been elected.  Val had just changed out of riding clothes and
+was on his way to the fire--a bookmaker's in Cornmarket.
+
+"Hallo!" said Jolly.
+
+"Hallo!" replied Val.
+
+The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having invited
+the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen each other
+again under somewhat exotic circumstances.
+
+Over a tailor's in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged young
+beings called minors, whose inheritances are large, whose parents are
+dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts are vicious.  At
+nineteen he had commenced one of those careers attractive and
+inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single bankruptcy is good as
+a feast.  Already famous for having the only roulette table then to be
+found in Oxford, he was anticipating his expectations at a dazzling rate.
+He out-crummed Crum, though of a sanguine and rather beefy type which
+lacked the latter's fascinating languor.  For Val it had been in the
+nature of baptism to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of
+confirmation to get back into college, after hours, through a window
+whose bars were deceptive.  Once, during that evening of delight,
+glancing up from the seductive green before him, he had caught sight,
+through a cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite.  'Rouge gagne,
+impair, et manque!'  He had not seen him again.
+
+"Come in to the Frying-pan and have tea," said Jolly, and they went in.
+
+A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an unseizable
+resemblance between these second cousins of the third generations of
+Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though Jolly's eyes were
+darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy.
+
+"Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please," said Jolly.
+
+"Have one of my cigarettes?" said Val.  "I saw you last night.  How did
+you do?"
+
+"I didn't play."
+
+"I won fifteen quid."
+
+Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had once
+heard his father make--'When you're fleeced you're sick, and when you
+fleece you're sorry--Jolly contented himself with:
+
+"Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap.  He's an awful
+fool."
+
+"Oh! I don't know," said Val, as one might speak in defence of a
+disparaged god; "he's a pretty good sport."
+
+They exchanged whiffs in silence.
+
+"You met my people, didn't you?" said Jolly.  "They're coming up
+to-morrow."
+
+Val grew a little red.
+
+"Really!  I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester November
+handicap."
+
+"Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races."
+
+"You can't make any money over them," said Val.
+
+"I hate the ring," said Jolly; "there's such a row and stink.  I like the
+paddock."
+
+"I like to back my judgment,"' answered Val.
+
+Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father's.
+
+"I haven't got any.  I always lose money if I bet."
+
+"You have to buy experience, of course."
+
+"Yes, but it's all messed-up with doing people in the eye."
+
+"Of course, or they'll do you--that's the excitement."
+
+Jolly looked a little scornful.
+
+"What do you do with yourself?  Row?"
+
+"No--ride, and drive about.  I'm going to play polo next term, if I can
+get my granddad to stump up."
+
+"That's old Uncle James, isn't it?  What's he like?"
+
+"Older than forty hills," said Val, "and always thinking he's going to be
+ruined."
+
+"I suppose my granddad and he were brothers."
+
+"I don't believe any of that old lot were sportsmen," said Val; "they
+must have worshipped money."
+
+"Mine didn't!" said Jolly warmly.
+
+Val flipped the ash off his cigarette.
+
+"Money's only fit to spend," he said; "I wish the deuce I had more."
+
+Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had inherited
+from old Jolyon: One didn't talk about money!  And again there was
+silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered buns.
+
+"Where are your people going to stay?" asked Val, elaborately casual.
+
+"'Rainbow.'  What do you think of the war?"
+
+"Rotten, so far.  The Boers aren't sports a bit.  Why don't they come out
+into the open?"
+
+"Why should they?  They've got everything against them except their way
+of fighting.  I rather admire them."
+
+"They can ride and shoot," admitted Val, "but they're a lousy lot. Do you
+know Crum?"
+
+"Of Merton?  Only by sight.  He's in that fast set too, isn't he? Rather
+La-di-da and Brummagem."
+
+Val said fixedly: "He's a friend of mine."
+
+"Oh! Sorry!"  And they sat awkwardly staring past each other, having
+pitched on their pet points of snobbery.  For Jolly was forming himself
+unconsciously on a set whose motto was:
+
+'We defy you to bore us.  Life isn't half long enough, and we're going to
+talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and dwell less on
+any subject than you can possibly imagine.  We are "the best"--made of
+wire and whipcord.'  And Val was unconsciously forming himself on a set
+whose motto was: 'We defy you to interest or excite us.  We have had
+every sensation, or if we haven't, we pretend we have.  We are so
+exhausted with living that no hours are too small for us.  We will lose
+our shirts with equanimity.  We have flown fast and are past everything.
+All is cigarette smoke. Bismillah!'  Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the
+English, was obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the
+close of a century ideals are mixed.  The aristocracy had already in the
+main adopted the 'jumping-Jesus' principle; though here and there one
+like Crum--who was an 'honourable'--stood starkly languid for that
+gambler's Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old 'dandies'
+and of 'the mashers' in the eighties.  And round Crum were still gathered
+a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a plutocratic following.
+
+But there was between the cousins another far less obvious
+antipathy--coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which each
+perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old feud
+persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed within them
+by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders. And Jolly, tinkling
+his teaspoon, was musing: 'His tie-pin and his waistcoat and his drawl
+and his betting--good Lord!'
+
+And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: 'He's rather a young beast!'
+
+"I suppose you'll be meeting your people?" he said, getting up. "I wish
+you'd tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.--not that there's
+anything much there--if they'd care to come."
+
+"Thanks, I'll ask them."
+
+"Would they lunch?  I've got rather a decent scout."
+
+Jolly doubted if they would have time.
+
+"You'll ask them, though?"
+
+"Very good of you," said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not go;
+but, instinctively polite, he added: "You'd better come and have dinner
+with us to-morrow."
+
+"Rather.  What time?"
+
+"Seven-thirty."
+
+"Dress?"
+
+"No."  And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.
+
+Holly and her father arrived by a midday train.  It was her first visit
+to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent, looking almost
+shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful place.  After lunch
+she wandered, examining his household gods with intense curiosity.
+Jolly's sitting-room was panelled, and Art represented by a set of
+Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old Jolyon, and by college
+photographs--of young men, live young men, a little heroic, and to be
+compared with her memories of Val.  Jolyon also scrutinised with care
+that evidence of his boy's character and tastes.
+
+Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set forth to
+the river.  Holly, between her brother and her father, felt elated when
+heads were turned and eyes rested on her.  That they might see him to the
+best advantage they left him at the Barge and crossed the river to the
+towing-path.  Slight in build--for of all the Forsytes only old Swithin
+and George were beefy--Jolly was rowing 'Two' in a trial eight.  He
+looked very earnest and strenuous.  With pride Jolyon thought him the
+best-looking boy of the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck
+by one or two of the others, but would not have said so for the world.
+The river was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still
+beautiful with colour.  Distinguished peace clung around the old city;
+Jolyon promised himself a day's sketching if the weather held.  The Eight
+passed a second time, spurting home along the Barges--Jolly's face was
+very set, so as not to show that he was blown.  They returned across the
+river and waited for him.
+
+"Oh!" said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, "I had to ask that chap
+Val Dartie to dine with us to-night.  He wanted to give you lunch and
+show you B.N.C., so I thought I'd better; then you needn't go.  I don't
+like him much."
+
+Holly's rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh! I don't know.  He seems to me rather showy and bad form.  What are
+his people like, Dad?  He's only a second cousin, isn't he?"
+
+Jolyon took refuge in a smile.
+
+"Ask Holly," he said; "she saw his uncle."
+
+"I liked Val," Holly answered, staring at the ground before her; "his
+uncle looked--awfully different."  She stole a glance at Jolly from under
+her lashes.
+
+"Did you ever," said Jolyon with whimsical intention, "hear our family
+history, my dears?  It's quite a fairy tale.  The first Jolyon
+Forsyte--at all events the first we know anything of, and that would be
+your great-great-grandfather--dwelt in the land of Dorset on the edge of
+the sea, being by profession an 'agriculturalist,' as your great-aunt put
+it, and the son of an agriculturist--farmers, in fact; your grandfather
+used to call them, 'Very small beer.'"  He looked at Jolly to see how his
+lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly's
+malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother's face.
+
+"We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it was
+before the Industrial Era began.  The second Jolyon Forsyte--your
+great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset Forsyte--built
+houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children, and migrated to London
+town.  It is known that he drank sherry.  We may suppose him representing
+the England of Napoleon's wars, and general unrest.  The eldest of his
+six sons was the third Jolyon, your grandfather, my dears--tea merchant
+and chairman of companies, one of the soundest Englishmen who ever
+lived--and to me the dearest."  Jolyon's voice had lost its irony, and
+his son and daughter gazed at him solemnly, "He was just and tenacious,
+tender and young at heart.  You remember him, and I remember him.  Pass
+to the others!  Your great-uncle James, that's young Val's grandfather,
+had a son called Soames--whereby hangs a tale of no love lost, and I
+don't think I'll tell it you.  James and the other eight children of
+'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five alive, may be said to
+have represented Victorian England, with its principles of trade and
+individualism at five per cent. and your money back--if you know what
+that means.  At all events they've turned thirty thousand pounds into a
+cool million between them in the course of their long lives.  They never
+did a wild thing--unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe
+was once swindled at thimble-rig, and was called 'Four-in-hand Forsyte'
+because he drove a pair.  Their day is passing, and their type, not
+altogether for the advantage of the country.  They were pedestrian, but
+they too were sound.  I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte--a poor holder of
+the name--"
+
+"No, Dad," said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand.
+
+"Yes," repeated Jolyon, "a poor specimen, representing, I'm afraid,
+nothing but the end of the century, unearned income, amateurism, and
+individual liberty--a different thing from individualism, Jolly.  You are
+the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man, and you open the ball of the new
+century."
+
+As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly said:
+"It's fascinating, Dad."
+
+None of them quite knew what she meant.  Jolly was grave.
+
+The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for lack of
+modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-room, in which
+Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone, when the only guest
+arrived.  Rather as one would touch a moth, Val took her hand.  And
+wouldn't she wear this 'measly flower'?  It would look ripping in her
+hair.  He removed a gardenia from his coat.
+
+"Oh!  No, thank you--I couldn't!"  But she took it and pinned it at her
+neck, having suddenly remembered that word 'showy'!  Val's buttonhole
+would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like him.  Did she
+realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her presence, and was
+that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction for her?
+
+"I never said anything about our ride, Val."
+
+"Rather not!  It's just between us."
+
+By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was
+giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too--the wish
+to make him happy.
+
+"Do tell me about Oxford.  It must be ever so lovely."
+
+Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked; the
+lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps. "Only," he
+added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could come down and see you."
+
+Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.
+
+"You haven't forgotten," he said, suddenly gathering courage, "that we're
+going mad-rabbiting together?"
+
+Holly smiled.
+
+"Oh!  That was only make-believe.  One can't do that sort of thing after
+one's grown up, you know."
+
+"Dash it! cousins can," said Val.  "Next Long Vac.--it begins in June,
+you know, and goes on for ever--we'll watch our chance."
+
+But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly shook
+her head.  "It won't come off," she murmured.
+
+"Won't it!" said Val fervently; "who's going to stop it?  Not your father
+or your brother."
+
+At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into Val's
+patent leather and Holly's white satin toes, where it itched and tingled
+during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness.
+
+Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism between
+the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became unconsciously ironical,
+which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth. A letter, handed to him
+after dinner, reduced him to a silence hardly broken till Jolly and Val
+rose to go.  He went out with them, smoking his cigar, and walked with
+his son to the gates of Christ Church.  Turning back, he took out the
+letter and read it again beneath a lamp.
+
+"DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"Soames came again to-night--my thirty-seventh birthday.  You were right,
+I mustn't stay here.  I'm going to-morrow to the Piedmont Hotel, but I
+won't go abroad without seeing you.  I feel lonely and down-hearted.
+
+"Yours affectionately,
+"IRENE."
+
+He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished at
+the violence of his feelings.  What had the fellow said or done?
+
+He turned into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of spires
+and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or dark-shadowed in
+the strong moonlight.  In this very heart of England's gentility it was
+difficult to realise that a lonely woman could be importuned or hunted,
+but what else could her letter mean? Soames must have been pressing her
+to go back to him again, with public opinion and the Law on his side,
+too! 'Eighteen-ninety-nine!,' he thought, gazing at the broken glass
+shining on the top of a villa garden wall; 'but when it comes to property
+we're still a heathen people!  I'll go up to-morrow morning.  I dare say
+it'll be best for her to go abroad.'  Yet the thought displeased him. Why
+should Soames hunt her out of England!  Besides, he might follow, and out
+there she would be still more helpless against the attentions of her own
+husband!  'I must tread warily,' he thought; 'that fellow could make
+himself very nasty.  I didn't like his manner in the cab the other
+night.'  His thoughts turned to his daughter June.  Could she help?  Once
+on a time Irene had been her greatest friend, and now she was a 'lame
+duck,' such as must appeal to June's nature!  He determined to wire to
+his daughter to meet him at Paddington Station.  Retracing his steps
+towards the Rainbow he questioned his own sensations.  Would he be
+upsetting himself over every woman in like case?  No! he would not.  The
+candour of this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had
+gone up to bed, he sought his own room.  But he could not sleep, and sat
+for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the
+moonlight on the roofs.
+
+Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and below
+Val's eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to make Jolly like
+him better.  The scent of the gardenia was strong in her little bedroom,
+and pleasant to her.
+
+And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was gazing at a
+moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing instead Holly, slim
+and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire when he first went in.
+
+But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand beneath his
+cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a race against him,
+while his father was calling from the towpath: 'Two!  Get your hands away
+there, bless you!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SOAMES PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH
+
+Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the West End
+of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames the most
+'attractive' word just coming into fashion.  He had never had his Uncle
+Swithin's taste in precious stones, and the abandonment by Irene when she
+left his house in 1887 of all the glittering things he had given her had
+disgusted him with this form of investment.  But he still knew a diamond
+when he saw one, and during the week before her birthday he had taken
+occasion, on his way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally
+a little before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one's money's
+worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods.
+
+Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him more
+and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his life, the
+supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong.  And, alongside the
+dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never with his
+self-preservation, now or never if he were to range himself and found a
+family, went the secret urge of his senses roused by the sight of her who
+had once been a passionately desired wife, and the conviction that it was
+a sin against common sense and the decent secrecy of Forsytes to waste
+the wife he had.
+
+In an opinion on Winifred's case, Dreamer, Q.C.--he would much have
+preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late in the day as
+to rouse the usual suspicion of a political job)--had advised that they
+should go forward and obtain restitution of conjugal rights, a point
+which to Soames had never been in doubt. When they had obtained a decree
+to that effect they must wait to see if it was obeyed.  If not, it would
+constitute legal desertion, and they should obtain evidence of misconduct
+and file their petition for divorce.  All of which Soames knew perfectly
+well. They had marked him ten and one.  This simplicity in his sister's
+case only made him the more desperate about the difficulty in his own.
+Everything, in fact, was driving him towards the simple solution of
+Irene's return.  If it were still against the grain with her, had he not
+feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to forget?  He at least had
+never injured her, and this was a world of compromise!  He could offer
+her so much more than she had now.  He would be prepared to make a
+liberal settlement on her which could not be upset.  He often scrutinised
+his image in these days.  He had never been a peacock like that fellow
+Dartie, or fancied himself a woman's man, but he had a certain belief in
+his own appearance--not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved,
+neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind. The
+Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his eyes, virtues.
+So far as he could tell there was no feature of him which need inspire
+dislike.
+
+Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural, even
+if far-fetched in their inception.  If he could only give tangible proof
+enough of his determination to let bygones be bygones, and to do all in
+his power to please her, why should she not come back to him?
+
+He entered Gaves and Cortegal's therefore, on the morning of November the
+9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch.  "Four twenty-five and dirt cheap,
+sir, at the money.  It's a lady's brooch."  There was that in his mood
+which made him accept without demur.  And he went on into the Poultry
+with the flat green morocco case in his breast pocket.  Several times
+that day he opened it to look at the seven soft shining stones in their
+velvet oval nest.
+
+"If the lady doesn't like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time. But
+there's no fear of that."  If only there were not!  He got through a vast
+amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew. A cablegram came
+while he was in the office with details from the agent in Buenos Aires,
+and the name and address of a stewardess who would be prepared to swear
+to what was necessary.  It was a timely spur to Soames, with his rooted
+distaste for the washing of dirty linen in public.  And when he set forth
+by Underground to Victoria Station he received a fresh impetus towards
+the renewal of his married life from the account in his evening paper of
+a fashionable divorce suit.  The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in
+anxiety and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and
+solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane.  He neither could nor would
+breath a word to his people of his intention--too reticent and proud--but
+the thought that at least they would be glad if they knew, and wish him
+luck, was heartening.
+
+James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of
+Kruger's ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor
+success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in The Times.
+He didn't know where it would end.  Soames sought to cheer him by the
+continual use of the word Buller.  But James couldn't tell!  There was
+Colley--and he got stuck on that hill, and this Ladysmith was down in a
+hollow, and altogether it looked to him a 'pretty kettle of fish'; he
+thought they ought to be sending the sailors--they were the chaps, they
+did a lot of good in the Crimea. Soames shifted the ground of
+consolation.  Winifred had heard from Val that there had been a 'rag' and
+a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection
+by blacking his face.
+
+"Ah!" James muttered, "he's a clever little chap."  But he shook his head
+shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn't know what would become of
+him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on that Soames had never
+had a boy.  He would have liked a grandson of his own name.  And
+now--well, there it was!
+
+Soames flinched.  He had not expected such a challenge to disclose the
+secret in his heart.  And Emily, who saw him wince, said:
+
+"Nonsense, James; don't talk like that!"
+
+But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on.  There were Roger
+and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons.  And Swithin and Timothy
+had never married.  He had done his best; but he would soon be gone now.
+And, as though he had uttered words of profound consolation, he was
+silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece of bread, and swallowing
+the bread.
+
+Soames excused himself directly after dinner.  It was not really cold,
+but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him against the fits
+of nervous shivering to which he had been subject all day.
+Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than in an ordinary
+black overcoat.  Then, feeling the morocco case flat against his heart,
+he sallied forth.  He was no smoker, but he lit a cigarette, and smoked
+it gingerly as he walked along.  He moved slowly down the Row towards
+Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to Chelsea at nine-fifteen.  What
+did she do with herself evening after evening in that little hole?  How
+mysterious women were!  One lived alongside and knew nothing of them.
+What could she have seen in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad?  For
+there was madness after all in what she had done--crazy moonstruck
+madness, in which all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his
+life ruined!  And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation,
+as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the
+Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence,
+forgiving and forgetting, and becoming  the godfather of her future.
+Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the moon-light struck
+down clear and white, he took out once more the morocco case, and let the
+beams draw colour from those stones. Yes, they were of the first water!
+But, at the hard closing snap of the case, another cold shiver ran
+through his nerves; and he walked on faster, clenching his gloved hands
+in the pockets of his coat, almost hoping she would not be in.  The
+thought of how mysterious she was again beset him.  Dining alone there
+night after night--in an evening dress, too, as if she were making
+believe to be in society!  Playing the piano--to herself!  Not even a dog
+or cat, so far as he had seen.  And that reminded him suddenly of the
+mare he kept for station work at Mapledurham.  If ever he went to the
+stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her home
+journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if longing to be back
+and lonely in her stable!  'I would treat her well,' he thought
+incoherently.  'I would be very careful.'  And all that capacity for home
+life of which a mocking Fate seemed for ever to have deprived him swelled
+suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed dreams opposite South Kensington
+Station.  In the King's Road a man came slithering out of a public house
+playing a concertina.  Soames watched him for a moment dance crazily on
+the pavement to his own drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to
+avoid contact with this piece of drunken foolery.  A night in the
+lock-up!  What asses people were!  But the man had noticed his movement
+of avoidance, and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the
+street. 'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously.  'To have
+ruffians like that about, with women out alone!'  A woman's figure in
+front had induced this thought.  Her walk seemed oddly familiar, and when
+she turned the corner for which he was bound, his heart began to beat.
+He hastened on to the corner to make certain. Yes!  It was Irene; he
+could not mistake her walk in that little drab street.  She threaded two
+more turnings, and from the last corner he saw her enter her block of
+flats.  To make sure of her now, he ran those few paces, hurried up the
+stairs, and caught her standing at her door.  He heard the latchkey in
+the lock, and reached her side just as she turned round, startled, in the
+open doorway.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," he said, breathless.  "I happened to see you. Let me
+come in a minute."
+
+She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless, her eyes
+widened by alarm.  Then seeming to master herself, she inclined her head,
+and said: "Very well."
+
+Soames closed the door.  He, too, had need to recover, and when she had
+passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute, taking deep breaths
+to still the beating of his heart.  At this moment, so fraught with the
+future, to take out that morocco case seemed crude.  Yet, not to take it
+out left him there before her with no preliminary excuse for coming.  And
+in this dilemma he was seized with impatience at all this paraphernalia
+of excuse and justification.  This was a scene--it could be nothing else,
+and he must face it.  He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically
+soft:
+
+"Why have you come again?  Didn't you understand that I would rather you
+did not?"
+
+He noticed her clothes--a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa, a
+small round toque of the same.  They suited her admirably.  She had money
+to spare for dress, evidently!  He said abruptly:
+
+"It's your birthday.  I brought you this," and he held out to her the
+green morocco case.
+
+"Oh!  No-no!"
+
+Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale grey
+velvet.
+
+"Why not?" he said.  "Just as a sign that you don't bear me ill-feeling
+any longer."
+
+"I couldn't."
+
+Soames took it out of the case.
+
+"Let me just see how it looks."
+
+She shrank back.
+
+He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the front
+of her dress.  She shrank again.
+
+Soames dropped his hand.
+
+"Irene," he said, "let bygones be bygones.  If I can, surely you might.
+Let's begin again, as if nothing had been.  Won't you?" His voice was
+wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in them a sort of
+supplication.
+
+She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall, gave a
+little gulp, and that was all her answer.  Soames went on:
+
+"Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little hole?
+Come back to me, and I'll give you all you want.  You shall live your own
+life; I swear it."
+
+He saw her face quiver ironically.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, "but I mean it this time.  I'll only ask one thing.
+I just want--I just want a son.  Don't look like that!  I want one.  It's
+hard."  His voice had grown hurried, so that he hardly knew it for his
+own, and twice he jerked his head back as if struggling for breath.  It
+was the sight of her eyes fixed on him, dark with a sort of fascinated
+fright, which pulled him together and changed that painful incoherence to
+anger.
+
+"Is it so very unnatural?" he said between his teeth, "Is it unnatural to
+want a child from one's own wife?  You wrecked our life and put this
+blight on everything.  We go on only half alive, and without any future.
+Is it so very unflattering to you that in spite of everything I--I still
+want you for my wife?  Speak, for Goodness' sake! do speak."
+
+Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.
+
+"I don't want to frighten you," said Soames more gently.  "Heaven knows.
+I only want you to see that I can't go on like this.  I want you back.  I
+want you."
+
+Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but her
+eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to keep him at
+bay.  And all those years, barren and bitter, since--ah! when?--almost
+since he had first known her, surged up in one great wave of recollection
+in Soames; and a spasm that for his life he could not control constricted
+his face.
+
+"It's not too late," he said; "it's not--if you'll only believe it."
+
+Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing gesture in
+front of her breast.  Soames seized them.
+
+"Don't!" she said under her breath.  But he stood holding on to them,
+trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver.  Then she said
+quietly:
+
+"I am alone here.  You won't behave again as you once behaved."
+
+Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned away.
+Was it possible that there could be such relentless unforgiveness!  Could
+that one act of violent possession be still alive within her?  Did it bar
+him thus utterly?  And doggedly he said, without looking up:
+
+"I am not going till you've answered me.  I am offering what few men
+would bring themselves to offer, I want a--a reasonable answer."
+
+And almost with surprise he heard her say:
+
+"You can't have a reasonable answer.  Reason has nothing to do with it.
+You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die."
+
+Soames stared at her.
+
+"Oh!" he said.  And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of speech
+and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man has received a
+deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is going to take it, or
+rather what it is going to do with him.
+
+"Oh!" he said again, "as bad as that?  Indeed!  You would rather die.
+That's pretty!"
+
+"I am sorry.  You wanted me to answer.  I can't help the truth, can I?"
+
+At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to actuality.  He
+snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in his pocket.
+
+"The truth!" he said; "there's no such thing with women.  It's
+nerves-nerves."
+
+He heard the whisper:
+
+"Yes; nerves don't lie.  Haven't you discovered that?" He was silent,
+obsessed by the thought: 'I will hate this woman.  I will hate her.'
+That was the trouble!  If only he could!  He shot a glance at her who
+stood unmoving against the wall with her head up and her hands clasped,
+for all the world as if she were going to be shot.  And he said quickly:
+
+"I don't believe a word of it.  You have a lover.  If you hadn't, you
+wouldn't be such a--such a little idiot."  He was conscious, before the
+expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of a non-sequitur,
+and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal freedom of his connubial
+days.  He turned away to the door.  But he could not go out.  Something
+within him--that most deep and secret Forsyte quality, the impossibility
+of letting go, the impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn
+nature of his own tenacity--prevented him.  He turned about again, and
+there stood, with his back against the door, as hers was against the wall
+opposite, quite unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by
+the whole width of the room.
+
+"Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?" he said.
+
+Irene's lips quivered; then she answered slowly:
+
+"Do you ever think that I found out my mistake--my hopeless, terrible
+mistake--the very first week of our marriage; that I went on trying three
+years--you know I went on trying?  Was it for myself?"
+
+Soames gritted his teeth.  "God knows what it was.  I've never understood
+you; I shall never understand you.  You had everything you wanted; and
+you can have it again, and more.  What's the matter with me?  I ask you a
+plain question: What is it?"  Unconscious of the pathos in that enquiry,
+he went on passionately: "I'm not lame, I'm not loathsome, I'm not a
+boor, I'm not a fool.  What is it? What's the mystery about me?"
+
+Her answer was a long sigh.
+
+He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full of
+expression.  "When I came here to-night I was--I hoped--I meant
+everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair again.
+And you meet me with 'nerves,' and silence, and sighs. There's nothing
+tangible.  It's like--it's like a spider's web."
+
+"Yes."
+
+That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.
+
+"Well, I don't choose to be in a spider's web.  I'll cut it."  He walked
+straight up to her.  "Now!"  What he had gone up to her to do he really
+did not know.  But when he was close, the old familiar scent of her
+clothes suddenly affected him.  He put his hands on her shoulders and
+bent forward to kiss her.  He kissed not her lips, but a little hard line
+where the lips had been drawn in; then his face was pressed away by her
+hands; he heard her say: "Oh! No!"  Shame, compunction, sense of futility
+flooded his whole being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+VISIT TO IRENE
+
+Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington.  She had
+received his telegram while at breakfast.  Her abode--a studio and two
+bedrooms in a St. John's Wood garden--had been selected by her for the
+complete independence which it guaranteed.  Unwatched by Mrs. Grundy,
+unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive lame ducks at any
+hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck without studio of its own
+made use of June's.  She enjoyed her freedom, and possessed herself with
+a sort of virginal passion; the warmth which she would have lavished on
+Bosinney, and of which--given her Forsyte tenacity--he must surely have
+tired, she now expended in championship of the underdogs and budding
+'geniuses' of the artistic world.  She lived, in fact, to turn ducks into
+the swans she believed they were.  The very fervour of her protection
+warped her judgments.  But she was loyal and liberal; her small eager
+hand was ever against the oppressions of academic and commercial opinion,
+and though her income was considerable, her bank balance was often a
+minus quantity.
+
+She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit to Eric
+Cobbley.  A miserable Gallery had refused to let that straight-haired
+genius have his one-man show after all.  Its impudent manager, after
+visiting his studio, had expressed the opinion that it would only be a
+'one-horse show from the selling point of view.'  This crowning example
+of commercial cowardice towards her favourite lame duck--and he so hard
+up, with a wife and two children, that he had caused her account to be
+overdrawn--was still making the blood glow in her small, resolute face,
+and her red-gold hair to shine more than ever.  She gave her father a
+hug, and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as
+he with her.  It became at once a question which would fry them first.
+
+Jolyon had reached the words: "My dear, I want you to come with me,"
+when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes moving from
+side to side--like the tail of a preoccupied cat--that she was not
+attending.  "Dad, is it true that I absolutely can't get at any of my
+money?"
+
+"Only the income, fortunately, my love."
+
+"How perfectly beastly!  Can't it be done somehow?  There must be a way.
+I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds."
+
+"A small Gallery," murmured Jolyon, "seems a modest desire.  But your
+grandfather foresaw it."
+
+"I think," cried June vigorously, "that all this care about money is
+awful, when there's so much genius in the world simply crushed out for
+want of a little.  I shall never marry and have children; why shouldn't I
+be able to do some good instead of having it all tied up in case of
+things which will never come off?"
+
+"Our name is Forsyte, my dear," replied Jolyon in the ironical voice to
+which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown accustomed; "and
+Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle their property that their
+grandchildren, in case they should die before their parents, have to make
+wills leaving the property that will only come to themselves when their
+parents die.  Do you follow that?  Nor do I, but it's a fact, anyway; we
+live by the principle that so long as there is a possibility of keeping
+wealth in the family it must not go out; if you die unmarried, your money
+goes to Jolly and Holly and their children if they marry.  Isn't it
+pleasant to know that whatever you do you can none of you be destitute?"
+
+"But can't I borrow the money?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head.  "You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if you could
+manage it out of your income."
+
+June uttered a contemptuous sound.
+
+"Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with."
+
+"My dear child," murmured Jolyon, "wouldn't it come to the same thing?"
+
+"No," said June shrewdly, "I could buy for ten thousand; that would only
+be four hundred a year.  But I should have to pay a thousand a year rent,
+and that would only leave me five hundred.  If I had the Gallery, Dad,
+think what I could do.  I could make Eric Cobbley's name in no time, and
+ever so many others."
+
+"Names worth making make themselves in time."
+
+"When they're dead."
+
+"Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having his name
+made?"
+
+"Yes, you," said June, pressing his arm.
+
+Jolyon started.  'I?' he thought.  'Oh!  Ah!  Now she's going to ask me
+to do something.  We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our different
+ways.'
+
+June came closer to him in the cab.
+
+"Darling," she said, "you buy the Gallery, and I'll pay you four hundred
+a year for it.  Then neither of us will be any the worse off.  Besides,
+it's a splendid investment."
+
+Jolyon wriggled.  "Don't you think," he said, "that for an artist to buy
+a Gallery is a bit dubious?  Besides, ten thousand pounds is a lump, and
+I'm not a commercial character."
+
+June looked at him with admiring appraisement.
+
+"Of course you're not, but you're awfully businesslike.  And I'm sure we
+could make it pay.  It'll be a perfect way of scoring off those wretched
+dealers and people."  And again she squeezed her father's arm.
+
+Jolyon's face expressed quizzical despair.
+
+"Where is this desirable Gallery?  Splendidly situated, I suppose?"
+
+"Just off Cork Street."
+
+'Ah!'  thought Jolyon, 'I knew it was just off somewhere.  Now for what I
+want out of her!'
+
+"Well, I'll think of it, but not just now.  You remember Irene?  I want
+you to come with me and see her.  Soames is after her again. She might be
+safer if we could give her asylum somewhere."
+
+The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most calculated
+to rouse June's interest.
+
+"Irene!  I haven't seen her since!  Of course!  I'd love to help her."
+
+It was Jolyon's turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for this
+spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting.
+
+"Irene is proud," he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden doubt of
+June's discretion; "she's difficult to help.  We must tread gently.  This
+is the place.  I wired her to expect us.  Let's send up our cards."
+
+"I can't bear Soames," said June as she got out; "he sneers at everything
+that isn't successful"
+
+Irene was in what was called the 'Ladies' drawing-room' of the Piedmont
+Hotel.
+
+Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her former
+friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a sofa never sat on
+since the hotel's foundation.  Jolyon could see that Irene was deeply
+affected by this simple forgiveness.
+
+"So Soames has been worrying you?" he said.
+
+"I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to him."
+
+"You're not going, of course?" cried June.
+
+Irene smiled faintly and shook her head.  "But his position is horrible,"
+she murmured.
+
+"It's his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he could."
+
+Jolyon remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped that no
+divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover's name.
+
+"Let us hear what Irene is going to do," he said.
+
+Irene's lips quivered, but she spoke calmly.
+
+"I'd better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me."
+
+"How horrible!"  cried June.
+
+"What else can I do?"
+
+"Out of the question," said Jolyon very quietly, "sans amour."
+
+He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she half turned
+her back on them, and stood regaining control of herself.
+
+June said suddenly:
+
+"Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone. What
+does he want at his age?"
+
+"A child.  It's not unnatural"
+
+"A child!" cried June scornfully.  "Of course!  To leave his money to.
+If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have one; then you
+can divorce him, and he can marry her."
+
+Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring June--her
+violent partizanship was fighting Soames' battle.
+
+"It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill, and see
+how things shape."
+
+"Of course," said June; "only...."
+
+Irene looked full at Jolyon--in all his many attempts afterwards to
+analyze that glance he never could succeed.
+
+"No!  I should only bring trouble on you all.  I will go abroad."
+
+He knew from her voice that this was final.  The irrelevant thought
+flashed through him: 'Well, I could see her there.'  But he said:
+
+"Don't you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he followed?"
+
+"I don't know.  I can but try."
+
+June sprang up and paced the room.  "It's all horrible," she said. "Why
+should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless year after year
+by this disgusting sanctimonious law?"  But someone had come into the
+room, and June came to a standstill.  Jolyon went up to Irene:
+
+"Do you want money?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And would you like me to let your flat?"
+
+"Yes, Jolyon, please."
+
+"When shall you be going?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"You won't go back there in the meantime, will you?"  This he said with
+an anxiety strange to himself.
+
+"No; I've got all I want here."
+
+"You'll send me your address?"
+
+She put out her hand to him.  "I feel you're a rock."
+
+"Built on sand," answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; "but it's a
+pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that.  And if you change
+your mind....!  Come along, June; say good-bye."
+
+June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene.
+
+"Don't think of him," she said under her breath; "enjoy yourself, and
+bless you!"
+
+With a memory of tears in Irene's eyes, and of a smile on her lips, they
+went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had interrupted the
+interview and was turning over the papers on the table.
+
+Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed:
+
+"Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!"
+
+But Jolyon did not respond.  He had something of his father's balance,
+and could see things impartially even when his emotions were roused.
+Irene was right; Soames' position was as bad or worse than her own.  As
+for the law--it catered for a human nature of which it took a naturally
+low view.  And, feeling that if he stayed in his daughter's company he
+would in one way or another commit an indiscretion, he told her he must
+catch his train back to Oxford; and hailing a cab, left her to Turner's
+water-colours, with the promise that he would think over that Gallery.
+
+But he thought over Irene instead.  Pity, they said, was akin to love!
+If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he pitied her
+profoundly.  To think of her drifting about Europe so handicapped and
+lonely!  'I hope to goodness she'll keep her head!' he thought; 'she
+might easily grow desperate.'  In fact, now that she had cut loose from
+her poor threads of occupation, he couldn't imagine how she would go
+on--so beautiful a creature, hopeless, and fair game for anyone!  In his
+exasperation was more than a little fear and jealousy.  Women did strange
+things when they were driven into corners.  'I wonder what Soames will do
+now!'  he thought.  'A rotten, idiotic state of things!  And I suppose
+they would say it was her own fault.'  Very preoccupied and sore at
+heart, he got into his train, mislaid his ticket, and on the platform at
+Oxford took his hat off to a lady whose face he seemed to remember
+without being able to put a name to her, not even when he saw her having
+tea at the Rainbow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WHERE FORSYTES FEAR TO TREAD
+
+Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case still
+flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as death.  A
+spider's web!  Walking fast, and noting nothing in the moonlight, he
+brooded over the scene he had been through, over the memory of her figure
+rigid in his grasp.  And the more he brooded, the more certain he became
+that she had a lover--her words, 'I would sooner die!' were ridiculous if
+she had not.  Even if she had never loved him, she had made no fuss until
+Bosinney came on the scene.  No; she was in love again, or she would not
+have made that melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all the
+circumstances was reasonable!  Very well!  That simplified matters.
+
+'I'll take steps to know where I am,' he thought; 'I'll go to Polteed's
+the first thing tomorrow morning.'
+
+But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble with
+himself.  He had employed Polteed's agency several times in the routine
+of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie's case, but he had never
+thought it possible to employ them to watch his own wife.
+
+It was too insulting to himself!
+
+He slept over that project and his wounded pride--or rather, kept vigil.
+Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she called herself by
+her maiden name of Heron.  Polteed would not know, at first at all
+events, whose wife she was, would not look at him obsequiously and leer
+behind his back.  She would just be the wife of one of his clients.  And
+that would be true--for was he not his own solicitor?
+
+He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at the first
+possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail himself.  And making
+Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee; he stole out of the house
+before the hour of breakfast.  He walked rapidly to one of those small
+West End streets where Polteed's and other firms ministered to the
+virtues of the wealthier classes.  Hitherto he had always had Polteed to
+see him in the Poultry; but he well knew their address, and reached it at
+the opening hour.  In the outer office, a room furnished so cosily that
+it might have been a money-lender's, he was attended by a lady who might
+have been a schoolmistress.
+
+"I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed.  He knows me--never mind my name."
+
+To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was reduced to
+having his wife spied on, was the overpowering consideration.
+
+Mr. Claud Polteed--so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed--was one of those
+men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown eyes, who
+might be taken for Jews but are really Phoenicians; he received Soames in
+a room hushed by thickness of carpet and curtains.  It was, in fact,
+confidentially furnished, without trace of document anywhere to be seen.
+
+Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door with a
+certain ostentation.
+
+"If a client sends for me," he was in the habit of saying, "he takes what
+precaution he likes.  If he comes here, we convince him that we have no
+leakages.  I may safely say we lead in security, if in nothing
+else....Now, sir, what can I do for you?"
+
+Soames' gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak.  It was absolutely
+necessary to hide from this man that he had any but professional interest
+in the matter; and, mechanically, his face assumed its sideway smile.
+
+"I've come to you early like this because there's not an hour to
+lose"--if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet!  "Have you a really
+trustworthy woman free?"
+
+Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his eyes over
+it, and locked the drawer up again.
+
+"Yes," he said; "the very woman."
+
+Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs--nothing but a faint
+flush, which might have been his normal complexion, betrayed him.
+
+"Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat C, Truro
+Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Polteed; "divorce, I presume?" and he blew into a
+speaking-tube.  "Mrs. Blanch in?  I shall want to speak to her in ten
+minutes."
+
+"Deal with any reports yourself," resumed Soames, "and send them to me
+personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered.  My client exacts
+the utmost secrecy."
+
+Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, 'You are teaching your grandmother,
+my dear sir;' and his eyes slid over Soames' face for one unprofessional
+instant.
+
+"Make his mind perfectly easy," he said.  "Do you smoke?"
+
+"No," said Soames.  "Understand me: Nothing may come of this.  If a name
+gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very serious
+consequences."
+
+Mr. Polteed nodded.  "I can put it into the cipher category.  Under that
+system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers."
+
+He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote on
+them, and handed one to Soames.
+
+"Keep that, sir; it's your key.  I retain this duplicate.  The case we'll
+call 7x.  The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the Mansions 25;
+yourself--I should say, your firm--31; my firm 32, myself 2.  In case you
+should have to mention your client in writing I have called him 43; any
+person we suspect will be 47; a second person 51.  Any special hint or
+instruction while we're about it?"
+
+"No," said Soames; "that is--every consideration compatible."
+
+Again Mr. Polteed nodded.  "Expense?"
+
+Soames shrugged.  "In reason," he answered curtly, and got up. "Keep it
+entirely in your own hands."
+
+"Entirely," said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and the
+door.  "I shall be seeing you in that other case before long. Good
+morning, sir."  His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames once more, and
+he unlocked the door.
+
+"Good morning," said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.
+
+Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself.  A spider's web,
+and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean method, so
+utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life as his most sacred
+piece of property.  But the die was cast, he could not go back.  And he
+went on into the Poultry, and locked away the green morocco case and the
+key to that cipher destined to make crystal-clear his domestic
+bankruptcy.
+
+Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all the
+private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of others, should
+dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own; and yet not odd, for
+who should know so well as he the whole unfeeling process of legal
+regulation.
+
+He worked hard all day.  Winifred was due at four o'clock; he was to take
+her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C., and waiting for
+her he re-read the letter he  had caused her to write the day of Dartie's
+departure, requiring him to return.
+
+"DEAR MONTAGUE,
+
+"I have received your letter with the news that you have left me for ever
+and are on your way to Buenos Aires.  It has naturally been a great
+shock.  I am taking this earliest opportunity of writing to tell you that
+I am prepared to let bygones be bygones if you will return to me at once.
+I beg you to do so.  I am very much upset, and will not say any more now.
+I am sending this letter registered to the address you left at your Club.
+Please cable to me.
+
+"Your still affectionate wife,
+"WINIFRED DARTIE."
+
+Ugh!  What bitter humbug!  He remembered leaning over Winifred while she
+copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said, laying down her pen,
+"Suppose he comes, Soames!"  in such a strange tone of voice, as if she
+did not know her own mind.  "He won't come," he had answered, "till he's
+spent his money.  That's why we must act at once."  Annexed to the copy
+of that letter was the original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the
+Iseeum Club.  Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly
+penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on.  He
+seemed to hear the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously!
+Seriously enough to write him as you did?  Do you think he meant it?"
+Never mind! The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not
+returned. Annexed also was his cabled answer: "Impossible return.
+Dartie." Soames shook his head.  If the whole thing were not disposed of
+within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad
+penny.  It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides
+all the worry to Winifred and his father.  'I must stiffen Dreamer's
+back,' he thought; 'we must push it on.'
+
+Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her fair
+hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James' barouche drawn by
+James' pair.  Soames had not seen it in the City since his father retired
+from business five years ago, and its incongruity gave him a shock.
+'Times are changing,' he thought; 'one doesn't know what'll go next!'
+Top hats even were scarcer.  He enquired after Val.  Val, said Winifred,
+wrote that he was going to play polo next term.  She thought he was in a
+very good set.  She added with fashionably disguised anxiety: "Will there
+be much publicity about my affair, Soames?  Must it be in the papers?
+It's so bad for him, and the girls."
+
+With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:
+
+"The papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to keep things out.
+They pretend to be guarding the public's morals, and they corrupt them
+with their beastly reports.  But we haven't got to that yet.  We're only
+seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution question.  Of course he
+understands that it's to lead to a divorce; but you must seem genuinely
+anxious to get Dartie back--you might practice that attitude to-day."
+
+Winifred sighed.
+
+"Oh!  What a clown Monty's been!"  she said.
+
+Soames gave her a sharp look.  It was clear to him that she could not
+take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing if given
+half a chance.  His own instinct had been firm in this matter from the
+first.  To save a little scandal now would only bring on his sister and
+her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin later on if Dartie were
+allowed to hang on to them, going down-hill and spending the money James
+would leave his daughter.  Though it was all tied up, that fellow would
+milk the settlements somehow, and make his family pay through the nose to
+keep him out of bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol!  They left the shining
+carriage, with the shining horses and the shining-hatted servants on the
+Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.'s Chambers in Crown Office Row.
+
+"Mr. Bellby is here, sir," said the clerk; "Mr. Dreamer will be ten
+minutes."
+
+Mr. Bellby, the junior--not as junior as he might have been, for Soames
+only employed barristers of established reputation; it was, indeed,
+something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed to establish
+that which made him employ them--Mr. Bellby was seated, taking a final
+glance through his papers.  He had come from Court, and was in wig and
+gown, which suited a nose jutting out like the handle of a tiny pump, his
+small shrewd blue eyes, and rather protruding lower lip--no better man to
+supplement and stiffen Dreamer.
+
+The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the weather and
+spoke of the war.  Soames interrupted suddenly:
+
+"If he doesn't comply we can't bring proceedings for six months.  I want
+to get on with the matter, Bellby."
+
+Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at Winifred and
+murmured: "The Law's delays, Mrs. Dartie."
+
+"Six months!" repeated Soames; "it'll drive it up to June!  We shan't get
+the suit on till after the long vacation.  We must put the screw on,
+Bellby"--he would have all his work cut out to keep Winifred up to the
+scratch.
+
+"Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir."
+
+They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting Winifred
+after an interval of one minute by his watch.
+
+Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before the
+fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he had the
+leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great learning, a
+considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and little greyish
+whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking of one eye, and the
+concealment of his lower with his upper lip, which gave a smothered turn
+to his speech.  He had a way, too, of coming suddenly round the corner on
+the person he was talking to; this, with a disconcerting tone of voice,
+and a habit of growling before he began to speak--had secured a
+reputation second in Probate and Divorce to very few.  Having listened,
+eye cocked, to Mr. Bellby's breezy recapitulation of the facts, he
+growled, and said:
+
+"I know all that;" and coming round the corner at Winifred, smothered the
+words:
+
+"We want to get him back, don't we, Mrs. Dartie?"
+
+Soames interposed sharply:
+
+"My sister's position, of course, is intolerable."
+
+Dreamer growled.  "Exactly.  Now, can we rely on the cabled refusal, or
+must we wait till after Christmas to give him a chance to have
+written--that's the point, isn't it?"
+
+"The sooner...."  Soames began.
+
+"What do you say, Bellby?" said Dreamer, coming round his corner.
+
+Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.
+
+"We won't be on till the middle of December.  We've no need to give um
+more rope than that."
+
+"No," said Soames, "why should my sister be incommoded by his choosing to
+go..."
+
+"To Jericho!" said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; "quite so.
+People oughtn't to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?" And he raised
+his gown into a sort of fantail.  "I agree.  We can go forward.  Is there
+anything more?"
+
+"Nothing at present," said Soames meaningly; "I wanted you to see my
+sister."
+
+Dreamer growled softly: "Delighted.  Good evening!"  And let fall the
+protection of his gown.
+
+They filed out.  Winifred went down the stairs.  Soames lingered. In
+spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.
+
+"The evidence is all right, I think," he said to Bellby.  "Between
+ourselves, if we don't get the thing through quick, we never may. D'you
+think he understands that?"
+
+"I'll make um," said Bellby.  "Good man though--good man."
+
+Soames nodded and hastened after his sister.  He found her in a draught,
+biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:
+
+"The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete."
+
+Winifred's face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to the
+carriage.  And, all through that silent drive back to Green Street, the
+souls of both of them revolved a single thought: 'Why, oh! why should I
+have to expose my misfortune to the public like this?  Why have to employ
+spies to peer into my private troubles? They were not of my making.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT
+
+The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was animating two
+members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of what they could no
+longer possess, was hardening daily in the British body politic.
+Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning a war which must affect
+property, had been heard to say that these Boers were a pig-headed lot;
+they were causing a lot of expense, and the sooner they had their lesson
+the better.  He would send out Wolseley!  Seeing always a little further
+than other people--whence the most considerable fortune of all the
+Forsytes--he had perceived already that Buller was not the man--'a bull
+of a chap, who just went butting, and if they didn't look out Ladysmith
+would fall.' This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he
+was enabled to say to everybody: 'I told you so.'  During that week of
+gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas attended so
+many drills in his corps, 'The Devil's Own,' that young Nicholas
+consulted the family physician about his son's health and was alarmed to
+find that he was perfectly sound.  The boy had only just eaten his
+dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense, and it was in a way
+a nightmare to his father and mother that he should be playing with
+military efficiency at a time when military efficiency in the civilian
+population might conceivably be wanted. His grandfather, of course,
+pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly educated in the feeling that no
+British war could be other than little and professional, and profoundly
+distrustful of Imperial commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to
+lose, for he owned De Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient
+sacrifice on the part of his grandson.
+
+At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed.  The inherent
+effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two months of the
+term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising out into vivid
+oppositions.  Normal adolescence, ever in England of a conservative
+tendency though not taking things too seriously, was vehement for a fight
+to a finish and a good licking for the Boers. Of this larger faction Val
+Dartie was naturally a member.  Radical youth, on the other hand, a small
+but perhaps more vocal body, was for stopping the war and giving the
+Boers autonomy.  Until Black Week, however, the groups were amorphous,
+without sharp edges, and argument remained but academic.  Jolly was one
+of those who knew not where he stood.  A streak of his grandfather old
+Jolyon's love of justice prevented, him from seeing one side only.
+Moreover, in his set of 'the best' there was a 'jumping-Jesus' of
+extremely advanced opinions and some personal magnetism.  Jolly wavered.
+His father, too, seemed doubtful in his views.  And though, as was proper
+at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father, watchful for
+defects which might still be remedied, still that father had an 'air'
+which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of ironic tolerance.  Artists
+of course; were notoriously Hamlet-like, and to this extent one must
+discount for one's father, even if one loved him.  But Jolyon's original
+view, that to 'put your nose in where you aren't wanted' (as the
+Uitlanders had done) 'and then work the oracle till you get on top is not
+being quite the clean potato,' had, whether founded in fact or no, a
+certain attraction for his son, who thought a deal about gentility.  On
+the other hand Jolly could not abide such as his set called 'cranks,' and
+Val's set called 'smugs,' so that he was still balancing when the clock
+of Black Week struck.  One--two--three, came those ominous repulses at
+Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso.  The sturdy English soul reacting
+after the first cried, 'Ah! but Methuen!' after the second: 'Ah! but
+Buller!' then, in inspissated gloom, hardened. And Jolly said to himself:
+'No, damn it!  We've got to lick the beggars now; I don't care whether
+we're right or wrong.'  And, if he had known it, his father was thinking
+the same thought.
+
+That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with 'one of
+the best.'  After the second toast, 'Buller and damnation to the Boers,'
+drunk--no heel taps--in the college Burgundy, he noticed that Val Dartie,
+also a guest, was looking at him with a grin and saying something to his
+neighbour.  He was sure it was disparaging.  The last boy in the world to
+make himself conspicuous or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather
+red and shut his lips.  The queer hostility he had always felt towards
+his second-cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced.  'All right!'  he
+thought, 'you wait, my friend!'  More wine than was good for him, as the
+custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped forth to a
+secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.
+
+"What did you say about me in there?"
+
+"Mayn't I say what I like?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I said you were a pro-Boer--and so you are!"
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+"D'you want a row?"
+
+"Of course, but not here; in the garden."
+
+"All right.  Come on."
+
+They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching; they
+climbed the garden railings.  The spikes on the top slightly ripped Val's
+sleeve, and occupied his mind.  Jolly's mind was occupied by the thought
+that they were going to fight in the precincts of a college foreign to
+them both.  It was not the thing, but never mind--the young beast!
+
+They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took off their
+coats.
+
+"You're not screwed, are you?" said Jolly suddenly.  "I can't fight you
+if you're screwed."
+
+"No more than you."
+
+"All right then."
+
+Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of
+defence.  They had drunk too much for science, and so were especially
+careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote Val almost
+accidentally on the nose.  After that it was all a dark and ugly
+scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one to call
+'time,' till, battered and blown, they unclinched and staggered back from
+each other, as a voice said:
+
+"Your names, young gentlemen?"
+
+At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate, like
+some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up their
+coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made for the
+secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight.  Here, in dim light,
+they mopped their faces, and without a word walked, ten paces apart, to
+the college gate.  They went out silently, Val going towards the Broad
+along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane towards the High.  His head, still
+fumed, was busy with regret that he had not displayed more science,
+passing in review the counters and knockout blows which he had not
+delivered.  His mind strayed on to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike
+that which he had just been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and
+sword, with thrust and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved
+Dumas.  He fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and
+D'Artagnan rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as
+Coconnas, Brissac, or Rochefort.  The fellow was just a confounded cousin
+who didn't come up to Cocker.  Never mind!  He had given him one or two.
+'Pro-Boer!'  The word still rankled, and thoughts of enlisting jostled
+his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing gallantly, while the
+Boers rolled over like rabbits.  And, turning up his smarting eyes, he
+saw the stars shining between the housetops of the High, and himself
+lying out on the Karoo (whatever that was) rolled in a blanket, with his
+rifle ready and his gaze fixed on a glittering heaven.
+
+He had a fearful 'head' next morning, which he doctored, as became one of
+'the best,' by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong coffee which he
+could not drink, and only sipping a little Hock at lunch.  The legend
+that 'some fool' had run into him round a corner accounted for a bruise
+on his cheek.  He would on no account have mentioned the fight, for, on
+second thoughts, it fell far short of his standards.
+
+The next day he went 'down,' and travelled through to Robin Hill. Nobody
+was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to Paris.  He spent
+a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of touch with either of his
+sisters.  June, indeed, was occupied with lame ducks, whom, as a rule,
+Jolly could not stand, especially that Eric Cobbley and his family,
+'hopeless outsiders,' who were always littering up the house in the
+Vacation.  And between Holly and himself there was a strange division, as
+if she were beginning to have opinions of her own, which was
+so--unnecessary.  He punched viciously at a ball, rode furiously but
+alone in Richmond Park, making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles
+put up to close certain worn avenues of grass--keeping his nerve in, he
+called it. Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are.  He
+bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting
+across the pond into the kitchen-garden wall, to the peril of gardeners,
+with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist and save South
+Africa for his country.  In fact, now that they were appealing for
+Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset. Ought he to go?  None of
+'the best,' so far as he knew--and he was in correspondence with
+several--were thinking of joining.  If they had been making a move he
+would have gone at once--very competitive, and with a strong sense of
+form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything--but to do it off
+his own bat might look like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really
+necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this
+young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked.  It was altogether
+mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became quite
+unlike his serene and rather lordly self.
+
+And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath--two riders,
+in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she on the
+left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and he on the
+right-hand as assuredly that 'squirt' Val Dartie.  His first impulse was
+to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning of this portent, tell the
+fellow to 'bunk,' and take Holly home. His second--to feel that he would
+look a fool if they refused.  He reined his horse in behind a tree, then
+perceived that it was equally impossible to spy on them.  Nothing for it
+but to go home and await her coming!  Sneaking out with that young
+bounder!  He could not consult with June, because she had gone up that
+morning in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot.  And his father was
+still in 'that rotten Paris.'  He felt that this was emphatically one of
+those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at school,
+where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to newspapers and
+placed them in the centre of their studies to accustom them to coolness
+in moments of danger.  He did not feel at all cool waiting in the
+stable-yard, idly stroking the dog Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat
+monk, and sad in the absence of his master, turned up his face, panting
+with gratitude for this attention.  It was half an hour before Holly
+came, flushed and ever so much prettier than she had any right to look.
+He saw her look at him quickly--guiltily of course--then followed her in,
+and, taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their grandfather's
+study.  The room, not much used now, was still vaguely haunted for them
+both by a presence with which they associated tenderness, large drooping
+white moustaches, the scent of cigar smoke, and laughter.  Here Jolly, in
+the prime of his youth, before he went to school at all, had been wont to
+wrestle with his grandfather, who even at eighty had an irresistible
+habit of crooking his leg.  Here Holly, perched on the arm of the great
+leather chair, had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which
+she would whisper secrets.  Through that window they had all three
+sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn, and a mysterious
+game called 'Wopsy-doozle,' not to be understood by outsiders, which made
+old Jolyon very hot.  Here once on a warm night Holly had appeared in her
+'nighty,' having had a bad dream, to have the clutch of it released.  And
+here Jolly, having begun the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into
+Mademoiselle Beauce's new-laid egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent
+down (in the absence of his father) to the ensuing dialogue:
+
+"Now, my boy, you mustn't go on like this."
+
+"Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she boxed
+mine again."
+
+"Strike a lady?  That'll never do!  Have you begged her pardon?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Then you must go and do it at once.  Come along."
+
+"But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one."
+
+"My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do."
+
+"Well, she lost her temper; and I didn't lose mine."
+
+"Come along."
+
+"You come too, then, Gran."
+
+"Well--this time only."
+
+And they had gone hand in hand.
+
+Here--where the Waverley novels and Byron's works and Gibbon's Roman
+Empire and Humboldt's Cosmos, and the bronzes on the mantelpiece, and
+that masterpiece of the oily school, 'Dutch Fishing-Boats at Sunset,'
+were fixed as fate, and for all sign of change old Jolyon might have been
+sitting there still, with legs crossed, in the arm chair, and domed
+forehead and deep eyes grave above The Times--here they came, those two
+grandchildren.  And Jolly said:
+
+"I saw you and that fellow in the Park."
+
+The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some satisfaction;
+she ought to be ashamed!
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.
+
+"Do you know," he said weightily, "that he called me a pro-Boer last
+term?  And I had to fight him."
+
+"Who won?"
+
+Jolly wished to answer: 'I should have,' but it seemed beneath him.
+
+"Look here!" he said, "what's the meaning of it?  Without telling
+anybody!"
+
+"Why should I?  Dad isn't here; why shouldn't I ride with him?"
+
+"You've got me to ride with.  I think he's an awful young rotter."
+
+Holly went pale with anger.
+
+"He isn't.  It's your own fault for not liking him."
+
+And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at the
+bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded from him so
+far by his sister's dark head under her soft felt riding hat.  He felt
+queerly disturbed, shaken to his young foundations.  A lifelong
+domination lay shattered round his feet. He went up to the Venus and
+mechanically inspected the tortoise.
+
+Why didn't he like Val Dartie?  He could not tell.  Ignorant of family
+history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started thirteen years
+before with Bosinney's defection from June in favour of Soames' wife,
+knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at sea.  He just did
+dislike him.  The question, however, was: What should he do?  Val Dartie,
+it was true, was a second-cousin, but it was not the thing for Holly to
+go about with him.  And yet to 'tell' of what he had chanced on was
+against his creed.  In this dilemma he went and sat in the old leather
+chair and crossed his legs.  It grew dark while he sat there staring out
+through the long window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves,
+becoming slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.
+
+'Grandfather!' he thought without sequence, and took out his watch. He
+could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going.  'Five o'clock!'
+His grandfather's first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth with age--all
+the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of many a fall.  The
+chime was like a little voice from out of that golden age, when they
+first came from St.  John's Wood, London, to this house--came driving
+with grandfather in his carriage, and almost instantly took to the trees.
+Trees to climb, and grandfather watering the geranium-beds below!  What
+was to be done? Tell Dad he must come home?  Confide in June?--only she
+was so--so sudden!  Do nothing and trust to luck?  After all, the Vac.
+would soon be over.  Go up and see Val and warn him off?  But how get his
+address?  Holly wouldn't give it him!  A maze of paths, a cloud of
+possibilities!  He lit a cigarette.  When he had smoked it halfway
+through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been passed
+gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper: 'Do nothing;
+be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!'  And Jolly heaved a sigh of
+contentment, blowing smoke through his nostrils....
+
+But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still frowning.  'He
+is not--he is not!'  were the words which kept forming on her lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JOLYON IN TWO MINDS
+
+A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare St.
+Lazare was Jolyon's haunt in Paris.  He hated his fellow Forsytes
+abroad--vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden runs, the Opera,
+Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge.  Their air of having come because they
+wanted to be somewhere else as soon as possible annoyed him.  But no
+other Forsyte came near this haunt, where he had a wood fire in his
+bedroom and the coffee was excellent.  Paris was always to him more
+attractive in winter.  The acrid savour from woodsmoke and
+chestnut-roasting braziers, the sharpness of the wintry sunshine on
+bright rays, the open cafes defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained
+brisk boulevard crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a
+soul which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.
+
+He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where pleasant
+dishes could be met with, queer types observed.  He felt philosophic in
+Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a subtle, purposeless
+meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a darkness shot with shifting
+gleams of light.
+
+When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he was far
+from admitting that Irene's presence was influencing him. He had not been
+there two days before he owned that the wish to see her had been more
+than half the reason.  In England one did not admit what was natural.  He
+had thought it might be well to speak to her about the letting of her
+flat and other matters, but in Paris he at once knew better.  There was a
+glamour over the city. On the third day he wrote to her, and received an
+answer which procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:
+"MY DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"It will be a happiness for me to see you.
+"IRENE."
+
+He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as he
+had often had going to visit an adored picture.  No woman, so far as he
+remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sensuous and yet
+impersonal sensation.  He was going to sit and feast his eyes, and come
+away knowing her no better, but ready to go and feast his eyes again
+to-morrow.  Such was his feeling, when in the tarnished and ornate little
+lounge of a quiet hotel near the river she came to him preceded by a
+small page-boy who uttered the word, "Madame," and vanished.  Her face,
+her smile, the poise of her figure, were just as he had pictured, and the
+expression of her face said plainly: 'A friend!'
+
+"Well," he said, "what news, poor exile?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Nothing from Soames?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you some
+money.  How do you like Paris?"
+
+While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he had
+never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving just a
+little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least conceivable
+dimple.  It was like discovering a woman in what had hitherto been a sort
+of soft and breathed-on statue, almost impersonally admired.  She owned
+that to be alone in Paris was a little difficult; and yet, Paris was so
+full of its own life that it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a
+desert.  Besides, the English were not liked just now!
+
+"That will hardly be your case," said Jolyon; "you should appeal to the
+French."
+
+"It has its disadvantages."
+
+Jolyon nodded.
+
+"Well, you must let me take you about while I'm here.  We'll start
+to-morrow.  Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we'll go to the
+Opera-Comique."
+
+It was the beginning of daily meetings.
+
+Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of the
+affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which to be
+friendly with a pretty woman.  Revelation was alighting like a bird in
+his heart, singing: 'Elle est ton reve!  Elle est ton reve!  Sometimes
+this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous--a bad case of elderly rapture.
+Having once been ostracised by Society, he had never since had any real
+regard for conventional morality; but the idea of a love which she could
+never return--and how could she at his age?--hardly mounted beyond his
+subconscious mind.  He was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and
+loneliness of her life.  Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the
+pleasure she clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably
+desirous of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure.  It was
+like watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink in his
+companionship.  So far as they could tell, no one knew her address except
+himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known, so that
+discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits to concerts,
+picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners, expeditions to Versailles,
+St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau.  And time fled--one of those full months
+without past to it or future.  What in his youth would certainly have
+been headlong passion, was now perhaps as deep a feeling, but far
+gentler, tempered to protective companionship by admiration,
+hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry--arrested in his veins at least so
+long as she was there, smiling and happy in their friendship, and always
+to him more beautiful and spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of
+life seemed to march in admirable step with his own, conditioned by
+emotion more than by reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to
+beauty, almost passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to
+instinctive rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable.  And
+during all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with
+which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work of
+art, a well-nigh impersonal desire.  The future--inexorable pendant to
+the present he took care not to face, for fear of breaking up his
+untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this time in places still
+more delightful, where the sun was hot and there were strange things to
+see and paint.  The end came swiftly on the 20th of January with a
+telegram:
+
+"Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry. JOLLY."
+
+Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the Louvre.
+It brought him up with a round turn.  While he was lotus-eating here, his
+boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought to be, had taken this great
+step towards danger, hardship, perhaps even death.  He felt disturbed to
+the soul, realising suddenly how Irene had twined herself round the roots
+of his being.  Thus threatened with severance, the tie between them--for
+it had become a kind of tie--no longer had impersonal quality.  The
+tranquil enjoyment of things in common, Jolyon perceived, was gone for
+ever.  He saw his feeling as it was, in the nature of an infatuation.
+Ridiculous, perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose
+itself. And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any
+such disclosure.  The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way.  He was
+proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight for the
+country; for on Jolyon's pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had left its mark.
+And so the end was reached before the beginning! Well, luckily he had
+never made a sign!
+
+When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the 'Virgin of the
+Rocks,' graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious.  'Have I to give up
+seeing that?' he thought.  'It's unnatural, so long as she's willing that
+I should see her.'  He stood, unnoticed, watching her, storing up the
+image of her figure, envying the picture on which she was bending that
+long scrutiny.  Twice she turned her head towards the entrance, and he
+thought: 'That's for me!'  At last he went forward.
+
+"Look!" he said.
+
+She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.
+
+That sigh, too, was for him!  His position was really cruel!  To be loyal
+to his son he must just shake her hand and go.  To be loyal to the
+feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that feeling was.
+Could she, would she understand the silence in which he was gazing at
+that picture?
+
+"I'm afraid I must go home at once," he said at last.  "I shall miss all
+this awfully."
+
+"So shall I; but, of course, you must go."
+
+"Well!" said Jolyon holding out his hand.
+
+Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.
+
+"Such is life!" he said.  "Take care of yourself, my dear!"
+
+He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his brain
+refused to steer him away from her.  From the doorway, he saw her lift
+her hand and touch its fingers with her lips.  He raised his hat
+solemnly, and did not look back again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+DARTIE VERSUS DARTIE
+
+The suit--Dartie versus Dartie--for restitution of those conjugal rights
+concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided, followed the
+laws of subtraction towards day of judgment.  This was not reached before
+the Courts rose for Christmas, but the case was third on the list when
+they sat again.  Winifred spent the Christmas holidays a thought more
+fashionably than usual, with the matter locked up in her low-cut bosom.
+James was particularly liberal to her that Christmas, expressing thereby
+his sympathy, and relief, at the approaching dissolution of her marriage
+with that 'precious rascal,' which his old heart felt but his old lips
+could not utter.
+
+The disappearance of Dartie made the fall in Consols a comparatively
+small matter; and as to the scandal--the real animus he felt against that
+fellow, and the increasing lead which property was attaining over
+reputation in a true Forsyte about to leave this world, served to drug a
+mind from which all allusions to the matter (except his own) were
+studiously kept.  What worried him as a lawyer and a parent was the fear
+that Dartie might suddenly turn up and obey the Order of the Court when
+made.  That would be a pretty how-de-do!  The fear preyed on him in fact
+so much that, in presenting Winifred with a large Christmas cheque, he
+said: "It's chiefly for that chap out there; to keep him from coming
+back."  It was, of course, to pitch away good money, but all in the
+nature of insurance against that bankruptcy which would no longer hang
+over him if only the divorce went through; and he questioned Winifred
+rigorously until she could assure him that the money had been sent. Poor
+woman!--it cost her many a pang to send what must find its way into the
+vanity-bag of 'that creature!'  Soames, hearing of it, shook his head.
+They were not dealing with a Forsyte, reasonably tenacious of his
+purpose.  It was very risky without knowing how the land lay out there.
+Still, it would look well with the Court; and he would see that Dreamer
+brought it out.  "I wonder," he said suddenly, "where that ballet goes
+after the Argentine"; never omitting a chance of reminder; for he knew
+that Winifred still had a weakness, if not for Dartie, at least for not
+laundering him in public.  Though not good at showing admiration, he
+admitted that she was behaving extremely well, with all her children at
+home gaping like young birds for news of their father--Imogen just on the
+point of coming out, and Val very restive about the whole thing.  He felt
+that Val was the real heart of the matter to Winifred, who certainly
+loved him beyond her other children.  The boy could spoke the wheel of
+this divorce yet if he set his mind to it.  And Soames was very careful
+to keep the proximity of the preliminary proceedings from his nephew's
+ears.  He did more.  He asked him to dine at the Remove, and over Val's
+cigar introduced the subject which he knew to be nearest to his heart.
+
+"I hear," he said, "that you want to play polo up at Oxford."
+
+Val became less recumbent in his chair.
+
+"Rather!" he said.
+
+"Well," continued Soames, "that's a very expensive business.  Your
+grandfather isn't likely to consent to it unless he can make sure that
+he's not got any other drain on him."  And he paused to see whether the
+boy understood his meaning.
+
+Val's thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace appeared
+on his wide mouth, and he muttered:
+
+"I suppose you mean my Dad!"
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "I'm afraid it depends on whether he continues to be
+a drag or not;" and said no more, letting the boy dream it over.
+
+But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey and a
+girl riding it.  Though Crum was in town and an introduction to Cynthia
+Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask; indeed, he shunned Crum
+and lived a life strange even to himself, except in so far as accounts
+with tailor and livery stable were concerned. To his mother, his sisters,
+his young brother, he seemed to spend this Vacation in 'seeing fellows,'
+and his evenings sleepily at home.  They could not propose anything in
+daylight that did not meet with the one response: "Sorry; I've got to see
+a fellow"; and he was put to extraordinary shifts to get in and out of
+the house unobserved in riding clothes; until, being made a member of the
+Goat's Club, he was able to transport them there, where he could change
+unregarded and slip off on his hack to Richmond Park.  He kept his
+growing sentiment religiously to himself.  Not for a world would he
+breathe to the 'fellows,' whom he was not 'seeing,' anything so
+ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and his.  But he could
+not help its destroying his other appetites.  It was coming between him
+and the legitimate pleasures of youth at last on its own in a way which
+must, he knew, make him a milksop in the eyes of Crum.  All he cared for
+was to dress in his last-created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin
+Hill Gate, where presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling
+with its slim and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves
+they would go off side by side, not talking very much, riding races
+sometimes, and sometimes holding hands.  More than once of an evening, in
+a moment of expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how this
+shy sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his 'life.'  But
+bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five were spoil-sports,
+prevented him.  After all, he supposed he would have to go through with
+College, and she would have to 'come out,' before they could be married;
+so why complicate things, so long as he could see her?  Sisters were
+teasing and unsympathetic beings, a brother worse, so there was no one to
+confide in.  Ah!  And this beastly divorce business!  What a misfortune
+to have a name which other people hadn't!  If only he had been called
+Gordon or Scott or Howard or something fairly common!  But Dartie--there
+wasn't another in the directory!  One might as well have been named
+Morkin for all the covert it afforded!  So matters went on, till one day
+in the middle of January the silver-roan palfrey and its rider were
+missing at the tryst.  Lingering in the cold, he debated whether he
+should ride on to the house: But Jolly might be there, and the memory of
+their dark encounter was still fresh within him.  One could not be always
+fighting with her brother!  So he returned dismally to town and spent an
+evening plunged in gloom.  At breakfast next day he noticed that his
+mother had on an unfamiliar dress and was wearing her hat.  The dress was
+black with a glimpse of peacock blue, the hat black and large--she looked
+exceptionally well.  But when after breakfast she said to him, "Come in
+here, Val," and led the way to the drawing-room, he was at once beset by
+qualms.  Winifred carefully shut the door and passed her handkerchief
+over her lips; inhaling the violette de Parme with which it had been
+soaked, Val thought: 'Has she found out about Holly?'
+
+Her voice interrupted
+
+"Are you going to be nice to me, dear boy?"
+
+Val grinned doubtfully.
+
+"Will you come with me this morning...."
+
+"I've got to see...."  began Val, but something in her face stopped him.
+"I say," he said, "you don't mean...."
+
+"Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning."  Already!--that d---d
+business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since nobody ever
+mentioned it.  In self-commiseration he stood picking little bits of skin
+off his fingers.  Then noticing that his mother's lips were all awry, he
+said impulsively: "All right, mother; I'll come.  The brutes!"  What
+brutes he did not know, but the expression exactly summed up their joint
+feeling, and restored a measure of equanimity.
+
+"I suppose I'd better change into a 'shooter,"' he muttered, escaping to
+his room.  He put on the 'shooter,' a higher collar, a pearl pin, and his
+neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous accompaniment.  Looking at
+himself in the glass, he said, "Well, I'm damned if I'm going to show
+anything!" and went down.  He found his grandfather's carriage at the
+door, and his mother in furs, with the appearance of one going to a
+Mansion House Assembly.  They seated themselves side by side in the
+closed barouche, and all the way to the Courts of Justice Val made but
+one allusion to the business in hand.  "There'll be nothing about those
+pearls, will there?"
+
+The little tufted white tails of Winifred's muff began to shiver.
+
+"Oh, no," she said, "it'll be quite harmless to-day.  Your grandmother
+wanted to come too, but I wouldn't let her.  I thought you could take
+care of me.  You look so nice, Val.  Just pull your coat collar up a
+little more at the back--that's right."
+
+"If they bully you...."  began Val.
+
+"Oh! they won't.  I shall be very cool.  It's the only way."
+
+"They won't want me to give evidence or anything?"
+
+"No, dear; it's all arranged."  And she patted his hand.  The determined
+front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in Val's chest, and he
+busied himself in drawing his gloves off and on.  He had taken what he
+now saw was the wrong pair to go with his spats; they should have been
+grey, but were deerskin of a dark tan; whether to keep them on or not he
+could not decide.  They arrived soon after ten.  It was his first visit
+to the Law Courts, and the building struck him at once.
+
+"By Jove!" he said as they passed into the hall, "this'd make four or
+five jolly good racket courts."
+
+Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs.
+
+"Here you are!" he said, without shaking hands, as if the event had made
+them too familiar for such formalities.  "It's Happerly Browne, Court I.
+We shall be on first."
+
+A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing now in
+the top of Val's chest, but he followed his mother and uncle doggedly,
+looking at no more than he could help, and thinking that the place
+smelled 'fuggy.'  People seemed to be lurking everywhere, and he plucked
+Soames by the sleeve.
+
+"I say, Uncle, you're not going to let those beastly papers in, are you?"
+
+Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to silence in its
+time.
+
+"In here," he said.  "You needn't take off your furs, Winifred."
+
+Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up.  In this
+confounded hole everybody--and there were a good many of them--seemed
+sitting on everybody else's knee, though really divided from each other
+by pews; and Val had a feeling that they might all slip down together
+into the well.  This, however, was but a momentary vision--of mahogany,
+and black gowns, and white blobs of wigs and faces and papers, all rather
+secret and whispery--before he was sitting next his mother in the front
+row, with his back to it all, glad of her violette de Parme, and taking
+off his gloves for the last time.  His mother was looking at him; he was
+suddenly conscious that she had really wanted him there next to her, and
+that he counted for something in this business.
+
+All right!  He would show them!  Squaring his shoulders, he crossed his
+legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats.  But just then an 'old Johnny'
+in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny raddled woman, came
+through a door into the high pew opposite, and he had to uncross his legs
+hastily, and stand up with everybody else.
+
+'Dartie versus Dartie!'
+
+It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one's name called out
+like this in public!  And, suddenly conscious that someone nearly behind
+him had begun talking about his family, he screwed his face round to see
+an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he were eating his own
+words--queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man he had seen once or twice
+dining at Park Lane and punishing the port; he knew now where they 'dug
+them up.'  All the same he found the old buffer quite fascinating, and
+would have continued to stare if his mother had not touched his arm.
+Reduced to gazing before him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge's face
+instead.  Why should that old 'sportsman' with his sarcastic mouth and
+his quick-moving eyes have the power to meddle with their private
+affairs--hadn't he affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as
+nasty?  And there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated
+individualism of his breed.  The voice behind him droned along:
+"Differences about money matters--extravagance of the respondent"
+(What a word!  Was that his father?)--"strained situation--frequent
+absences on the part of Mr. Dartie.  My client, very rightly, your
+Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course--but lead to
+ruin--remonstrated--gambling at cards and on the racecourse--" ('That's
+right!' thought Val, 'pile it on!') "Crisis early in October, when the
+respondent wrote her this letter from his Club." Val sat up and his ears
+burned.  "I propose to read it with the emendations necessary to the
+epistle of a gentleman who has been--shall we say dining, me Lud?"
+
+'Old brute!' thought Val, flushing deeper; 'you're not paid to make
+jokes!'
+
+"'You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house. I am
+leaving the country to-morrow.  It's played out'--an expression, your
+Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who have not met with
+conspicuous success."
+
+'Sniggering owls!' thought Val, and his flush deepened.
+
+"'I am tired of being insulted by you.'  My client will tell your Ludship
+that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him 'the limit',--a
+very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all the circumstances."
+
+Val glanced sideways at his mother's impassive face, it had a hunted look
+in the eyes.  'Poor mother,' he thought, and touched her arm with his
+own.  The voice behind droned on.
+
+"'I am going to live a new life.  M.  D.'"
+
+"And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship Tuscarora for
+Buenos Aires.  Since then we have nothing from him but a cabled refusal
+in answer to the letter which my client wrote the following day in great
+distress, begging him to return to her. With your Ludship's permission.
+I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the box."
+
+When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and say:
+'Look here!  I'm going to see you jolly well treat her decently.'  He
+subdued it, however; heard her saying, 'the truth, the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth,' and looked up.  She made a rich figure of it, in
+her furs and large hat, with a slight flush on her cheek-bones, calm,
+matter-of-fact; and he felt proud of her thus confronting all these
+'confounded lawyers.'  The examination began.  Knowing that this was only
+the preliminary to divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the
+questions framed so as to give the impression that she really wanted his
+father back. It seemed to him that they were 'foxing Old Bagwigs finely.'
+
+And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly:
+
+"Now, why did your husband leave you--not because you called him 'the
+limit,' you know?"
+
+Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving his
+face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told him that
+the issue was in peril.  Had Uncle Soames and the old buffer behind made
+a mess of it?  His mother was speaking with a slight drawl.
+
+"No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time."
+
+"What had gone on?"
+
+"Our differences about money."
+
+"But you supplied the money.  Do you suggest that he left you to better
+his position?"
+
+'The brute!  The old brute, and nothing but the brute!'  thought Val
+suddenly.  'He smells a rat he's trying to get at the pastry!' And his
+heart stood still.  If--if he did, then, of course, he would know that
+his mother didn't really want his father back.  His mother spoke again, a
+thought more fashionably.
+
+"No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money. It
+took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last--and when he
+did...."
+
+"I see, you had refused.  But you've sent him some since."
+
+"My Lord, I wanted him back."
+
+"And you thought that would bring him?"
+
+"I don't know, my Lord, I acted on my father's advice."
+
+Something in the Judge's face, in the sound of the papers behind him, in
+the sudden crossing of his uncle's legs, told Val that she had made just
+the right answer.  'Crafty!'  he thought; 'by Jove, what humbug it all
+is!'
+
+The Judge was speaking:
+
+"Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie.  Are you still fond of your
+husband?"
+
+Val's hands, slack behind him, became fists.  What business had that
+Judge to make things human suddenly?  To make his mother speak out of her
+heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn't know herself, before all these
+people!  It wasn't decent.  His mother answered, rather low: "Yes, my
+Lord."  Val saw the Judge nod.  'Wish I could take a cock-shy at your
+head!' he thought irreverently, as his mother came back to her seat
+beside him.  Witnesses to his father's departure and continued absence
+followed--one of their own maids even, which struck Val as particularly
+beastly; there was more talking, all humbug; and then the Judge
+pronounced the decree for restitution, and they got up to go.  Val walked
+out behind his mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level
+best to despise everybody.  His mother's voice in the corridor roused him
+from an angry trance.
+
+"You behaved beautifully, dear.  It was such a comfort to have you. Your
+uncle and I are going to lunch."
+
+"All right," said Val; "I shall have time to go and see that fellow."
+And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs and out into the
+air.  He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the Goat's Club.  His
+thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before her brother showed her
+this thing in to-morrow's paper.
+
+              *******************************
+
+When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the Cheshire
+Cheese.  He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr. Bellby.  At that
+early hour of noon they would have it to themselves, and Winifred had
+thought it would be 'amusing' to see this far-famed hostelry.  Having
+ordered a light repast, to the consternation of the waiter, they awaited
+its arrival together with that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after
+the hour and a half's suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity.  Mr.
+Bellby entered presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were
+glum. Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was the
+matter with that!
+
+"Quite," said Soames in a suitably low voice, "but we shall have to begin
+again to get evidence.  He'll probably try the divorce--it will look
+fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from the start.  His
+questions showed well enough that he doesn't like this restitution
+dodge."
+
+"Pho!" said Mr. Bellby cheerily, "he'll forget!  Why, man, he'll have
+tried a hundred cases between now and then.  Besides, he's bound by
+precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is satisfactory.  We
+won't let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge of the facts.  Dreamer
+did it very nicely--he's got a fatherly touch about um!"
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie," went on Mr. Bellby; "ye've a natural
+gift for giving evidence.  Steady as a rock."
+
+Here the, waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and the
+remark: "I 'urried up the pudden, sir.  You'll find plenty o' lark in it
+to-day."
+
+Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose.  But Soames
+and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of gravified brown
+masses, touching them gingerly with their forks in the hope of
+distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little song-givers.  Having begun,
+however, they found they were hungrier than they thought, and finished
+the lot, with a glass of port apiece. Conversation turned on the war.
+Soames thought Ladysmith would fall, and it might last a year.  Bellby
+thought it would be over by the summer.  Both agreed that they wanted
+more men.  There was nothing for it but complete victory, since it was
+now a question of prestige.  Winifred brought things back to more solid
+ground by saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come on till
+after the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the boys would have
+forgotten about it before Val had to go up again; the London season too
+would be over.  The lawyers reassured her, an interval of six months was
+necessary--after that the earlier the better.  People were now beginning
+to come in, and they parted--Soames to the city, Bellby to his chambers,
+Winifred in a hansom to Park Lane to let her mother know how she had
+fared.  The issue had been so satisfactory on the whole that it was
+considered advisable to tell James, who never failed to say day after day
+that he didn't know about Winifred's affair, he couldn't tell.  As his
+sands ran out; the importance of mundane matters became increasingly
+grave to him, as if he were feeling: 'I must make the most of it, and
+worry well; I shall soon have nothing to worry about.'
+
+He received the report grudgingly.  It was a new-fangled way of going
+about things, and he didn't know!  But he gave Winifred a cheque, saying:
+
+"I expect you'll have a lot of expense.  That's a new hat you've got on.
+Why doesn't Val come and see us?"
+
+Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon.  And, going home, she
+sought her bedroom where she could be alone.  Now that her husband had
+been ordered back into her custody with a view to putting him away from
+her for ever, she would try once more to find out from her sore and
+lonely heart what she really wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CHALLENGE
+
+The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out while
+Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would canter on to
+the usual tryst.  His spirits were rising rapidly. There had been nothing
+so very terrible in the morning's proceedings beyond the general disgrace
+of violated privacy.  'If we were engaged!'  he thought, 'what happens
+wouldn't matter.'  He felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and
+clamours at the results of matrimony, and hastens to get married.  And he
+galloped over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be
+late. But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second
+defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully.  He could not go
+back without seeing her to-day!  Emerging from the Park, he proceeded
+towards Robin Hill.  He could not make up his mind for whom to ask.
+Suppose her father were back, or her sister or brother were in!  He
+decided to gamble, and ask for them all first, so that if he were in luck
+and they were not there, it would be quite natural in the end to ask for
+Holly; while if any of them were in--an 'excuse for a ride' must be his
+saving grace.
+
+"Only Miss Holly is in, sir."
+
+"Oh! thanks.  Might I take my horse round to the stables?  And would you
+say--her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie."
+
+When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy.  She led him
+to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat.
+
+"I've been awfully anxious," said Val in a low voice.  "What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Jolly knows about our riding."
+
+"Is he in?"
+
+"No; but I expect he will be soon."
+
+"Then!" cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand.  She tried to
+withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at him wistfully.
+
+"First of all," he said, "I want to tell you something about my family.
+My Dad, you know, isn't altogether--I mean, he's left my mother and
+they're trying to divorce him; so they've ordered him to come back, you
+see.  You'll see that in the paper to-morrow."
+
+Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand squeezed his.
+But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he hurried on:
+
+"Of course there's nothing very much at present, but there will be, I
+expect, before it's over; divorce suits are beastly, you know.  I wanted
+to tell you, because--because--you ought to know--if--" and he began to
+stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, "if--if you're going to be a
+darling and love me, Holly.  I love you--ever so; and I want to be
+engaged."  He had done it in a manner so inadequate that he could have
+punched his own head; and dropping on his knees, he tried to get nearer
+to that soft, troubled face.  "You do love me--don't you?  If you don't
+I...." There was a moment of silence and suspense, so awful that he could
+hear the sound of a mowing-machine far out on the lawn pretending there
+was grass to cut. Then she swayed forward; her free hand touched his
+hair, and he gasped: "Oh, Holly!"
+
+Her answer was very soft: "Oh, Val!"
+
+He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood, as the
+masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched, trembly.  He was
+afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break the spell; lest, if he
+did, she should shrink and deny her own surrender--so tremulous was she
+in his grasp, with her eyelids closed and his lips nearing them.  Her
+eyes opened, seemed to swim a little; he pressed his lips to hers.
+Suddenly he sprang up; there had been footsteps, a sort of startled
+grunt.  He looked round.  No one!  But the long curtains which barred off
+the outer hall were quivering.
+
+"My God!  Who was that?"
+
+Holly too was on her feet.
+
+"Jolly, I expect," she whispered.
+
+Val clenched fists and resolution.
+
+"All right!" he said, "I don't care a bit now we're engaged," and
+striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside.  There at the
+fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately turned.  Val
+went forward.  Jolly faced round on him.
+
+"I beg your pardon for hearing," he said.
+
+With the best intentions in the world, Val could not help admiring him at
+that moment; his face was clear, his voice quiet, he looked somehow
+distinguished, as if acting up to principle.
+
+"Well!" Val said abruptly, "it's nothing to you."
+
+"Oh!" said Jolly; "you come this way," and he crossed the hall. Val
+followed.  At the study door he felt a touch on his arm; Holly's voice
+said:
+
+"I'm coming too."
+
+"No," said Jolly.
+
+"Yes," said Holly.
+
+Jolly opened the door, and they all three went in.  Once in the little
+room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of the worn
+Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each other, quite
+incapable of seeing any humour in the situation.
+
+Val broke the silence.
+
+"Holly and I are engaged.",
+
+Jolly stepped back and leaned against the lintel of the window.
+
+"This is our house," he said; "I'm not going to insult you in it. But my
+father's away.  I'm in charge of my sister.  You've taken advantage of
+me.
+
+"I didn't mean to," said Val hotly.
+
+"I think you did," said Jolly.  "If you hadn't meant to, you'd have
+spoken to me, or waited for my father to come back."
+
+"There were reasons," said Val.
+
+"What reasons?"
+
+"About my family--I've just told her.  I wanted her to know before things
+happen."
+
+Jolly suddenly became less distinguished.
+
+"You're kids," he said, "and you know you are.
+
+"I am not a kid," said Val.
+
+"You are--you're not twenty."
+
+"Well, what are you?"
+
+"I am twenty," said Jolly.
+
+"Only just; anyway, I'm as good a man as you."
+
+Jolly's face crimsoned, then clouded.  Some struggle was evidently taking
+place in him; and Val and Holly stared at him, so clearly was that
+struggle marked; they could even hear him breathing.  Then his face
+cleared up and became oddly resolute.
+
+"We'll see that," he said.  "I dare you to do what I'm going to do."
+
+"Dare me?"
+
+Jolly smiled.  "Yes," he said, "dare you; and I know very well you
+won't."
+
+A stab of misgiving shot through Val; this was riding very blind.
+
+"I haven't forgotten that you're a fire-eater," said Jolly slowly, "and I
+think that's about all you are; or that you called me a pro-Boer."
+
+Val heard a gasp above the sound of his own hard breathing, and saw
+Holly's face poked a little forward, very pale, with big eyes.
+
+"Yes," went on Jolly with a sort of smile, "we shall soon see.  I'm going
+to join the Imperial Yeomanry, and I dare you to do the same, Mr. Val
+Dartie."
+
+Val's head jerked on its stem.  It was like a blow between the eyes, so
+utterly unthought of, so extreme and ugly in the midst of his dreaming;
+and he looked at Holly with eyes grown suddenly, touchingly haggard.
+
+"Sit down!" said Jolly.  "Take your time!  Think it over well." And he
+himself sat down on the arm of his grandfather's chair.
+
+Val did not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his breeches'
+pockets-hands clenched and quivering.  The full awfulness of this
+decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with double knocks as
+of an angry postman.  If he did not take that 'dare' he was disgraced in
+Holly's eyes, and in the eyes of that young enemy, her brute of a
+brother.  Yet if he took it, ah! then all would vanish--her face, her
+eyes, her hair, her kisses just begun!
+
+"Take your time," said Jolly again; "I don't want to be unfair."
+
+And they both looked at Holly.  She had recoiled against the bookshelves
+reaching to the ceiling; her dark head leaned against Gibbon's Roman
+Empire, her eyes in a sort of soft grey agony were fixed on Val.  And he,
+who had not much gift of insight, had suddenly a gleam of vision.  She
+would be proud of her brother--that enemy!  She would be ashamed of him!
+His hands came out of his pockets as if lifted by a spring.
+
+"All right!" he said.  "Done!"
+
+Holly's face--oh! it was queer!  He saw her flush, start forward. He had
+done the right thing--her face was shining with wistful admiration.
+Jolly stood up and made a little bow as who should say: 'You've passed.'
+
+"To-morrow, then," he said, "we'll go together."
+
+Recovering from the impetus which had carried him to that decision, Val
+looked at him maliciously from under his lashes.  'All right,' he
+thought, 'one to you.  I shall have to join--but I'll get back on you
+somehow.'  And he said with dignity: "I shall be ready."
+
+"We'll meet at the main Recruiting Office, then," said Jolly, "at twelve
+o'clock."  And, opening the window, he went out on to the terrace,
+conforming to the creed which had made him retire when he surprised them
+in the hall.
+
+The confusion in the mind of Val thus left alone with her for whom he had
+paid this sudden price was extreme.  The mood of 'showing-off' was still,
+however, uppermost.  One must do the wretched thing with an air.
+
+"We shall get plenty of riding and shooting, anyway," he said; "that's
+one comfort."  And it gave him a sort of grim pleasure to hear the sigh
+which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart.
+
+"Oh! the war'll soon be over," he said; "perhaps we shan't even have to
+go out.  I don't care, except for you."  He would be out of the way of
+that beastly divorce.  It was an ill-wind!  He felt her warm hand slip
+into his.  Jolly thought he had stopped their loving each other, did he?
+He held her tightly round the waist, looking at her softly through his
+lashes, smiling to cheer her up, promising to come down and see her soon,
+feeling somehow six inches taller and much more in command of her than he
+had ever dared feel before.  Many times he kissed her before he mounted
+and rode back to town.  So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does the
+possessive instinct flourish and grow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DINNER AT JAMES'
+
+Dinner parties were not now given at James' in Park Lane--to every house
+the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer 'up to it'; no more
+can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above twenty fine white
+expanses; nor does the household cat any longer wonder why she is
+suddenly shut up.
+
+So with something like excitement Emily--who at seventy would still have
+liked a little feast and fashion now and then--ordered dinner for six
+instead of two, herself wrote a number of foreign words on cards, and
+arranged the flowers--mimosa from the Riviera, and white Roman hyacinths
+not from Rome.  There would only be, of course, James and herself,
+Soames, Winifred, Val, and Imogen--but she liked to pretend a little and
+dally in imagination with the glory of the past.  She so dressed herself
+that James remarked:
+
+"What are you putting on that thing for?  You'll catch cold."
+
+But Emily knew that the necks of women are protected by love of shining,
+unto fourscore years, and she only answered:
+
+"Let me put you on one of those dickies I got you, James; then you'll
+only have to change your trousers, and put on your velvet coat, and there
+you'll be.  Val likes you to look nice."
+
+"Dicky!" said James.  "You're always wasting your money on something."
+
+But he suffered the change to be made till his neck also shone, murmuring
+vaguely:
+
+"He's an extravagant chap, I'm afraid."
+
+A little brighter in the eye, with rather more colour than usual in his
+cheeks, he took his seat in the drawing-room to wait for the sound of the
+front-door bell.
+
+"I've made it a proper dinner party," Emily said comfortably; "I thought
+it would be good practice for Imogen--she must get used to it now she's
+coming out."
+
+James uttered an indeterminate sound, thinking of Imogen as she used to
+climb about his knee or pull Christmas crackers with him.
+
+"She'll be pretty," he muttered, "I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"She is pretty," said Emily; "she ought to make a good match."
+
+"There you go," murmured James; "she'd much better stay at home and look
+after her mother."  A second Dartie carrying off his pretty granddaughter
+would finish him!  He had never quite forgiven Emily for having been as
+much taken in by Montague Dartie as he himself had been.
+
+"Where's Warmson?" he said suddenly.  "I should like a glass of Madeira
+to-night."
+
+"There's champagne, James."
+
+James shook his head.  "No body," he said; "I can't get any good out of
+it."
+
+Emily reached forward on her side of the fire and rang the bell.
+
+"Your master would like a bottle of Madeira opened, Warmson."
+
+"No, no!" said James, the tips of his ears quivering with vehemence, and
+his eyes fixed on an object seen by him alone. "Look here, Warmson, you
+go to the inner cellar, and on the middle shelf of the end bin on the
+left you'll see seven bottles; take the one in the centre, and don't
+shake it.  It's the last of the Madeira I had from Mr. Jolyon when we
+came in here--never been moved; it ought to be in prime condition still;
+but I don't know, I can't tell."
+
+"Very good, sir," responded the withdrawing Warmson.
+
+"I was keeping it for our golden wedding," said James suddenly, "but I
+shan't live three years at my age."
+
+"Nonsense, James," said Emily, "don't talk like that."
+
+"I ought to have got it up myself," murmured James, "he'll shake it as
+likely as not."  And he sank into silent recollection of long moments
+among the open gas-jets, the cobwebs and the good smell of wine-soaked
+corks, which had been appetiser to so many feasts.  In the wine from that
+cellar was written the history of the forty odd years since he had come
+to the Park Lane house with his young bride, and of the many generations
+of friends and acquaintances who had passed into the unknown; its
+depleted bins preserved the record of family festivity--all the
+marriages, births, deaths of his kith and kin.  And when he was gone
+there it would be, and he didn't know what would become of it.  It'd be
+drunk or spoiled, he shouldn't wonder!
+
+From that deep reverie the entrance of his son dragged him, followed very
+soon by that of Winifred and her two eldest.
+
+They went down arm-in-arm--James with Imogen, the debutante, because his
+pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred; Emily with Val,
+whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened. This was to be a proper
+full 'blowout' with 'fizz' and port!  And he felt in need of it, after
+what he had done that day, as yet undivulged.  After the first glass or
+two it became pleasant to have this bombshell up his sleeve, this piece
+of sensational patriotism, or example, rather, of personal daring, to
+display--for his pleasure in what he had done for his Queen and Country
+was so far entirely personal.  He was now a 'blood,' indissolubly
+connected with guns and horses; he had a right to swagger--not, of
+course, that he was going to.  He should just announce it quietly, when
+there was a pause.  And, glancing down the menu, he determined on 'Bombe
+aux fraises' as the proper moment; there would be a certain solemnity
+while they were eating that.  Once or twice before they reached that rosy
+summit of the dinner he was attacked by remembrance that his grandfather
+was never told anything! Still, the old boy was drinking Madeira, and
+looking jolly fit! Besides, he ought to be pleased at this set-off to the
+disgrace of the divorce.  The sight of his uncle opposite, too, was a
+sharp incentive.  He was so far from being a sportsman that it would be
+worth a lot to see his face.  Besides, better to tell his mother in this
+way than privately, which might upset them both!  He was sorry for her,
+but after all one couldn't be expected to feel much for others when one
+had to part from Holly.
+
+His grandfather's voice travelled to him thinly.  "Val, try a little of
+the Madeira with your ice.  You won't get that up at college."
+
+Val watched the slow liquid filling his glass, the essential oil of the
+old wine glazing the surface; inhaled its aroma, and thought: 'Now for
+it!'  It was a rich moment.  He sipped, and a gentle glow spread in his
+veins, already heated.  With a rapid look round, he said, "I joined the
+Imperial Yeomanry to-day, Granny," and emptied his glass as though
+drinking the health of his own act.
+
+"What!"  It was his mother's desolate little word.
+
+"Young Jolly Forsyte and I went down there together."
+
+"You didn't sign?" from Uncle Soames.
+
+"Rather!  We go into camp on Monday."
+
+"I say!" cried Imogen.
+
+All looked at James.  He was leaning forward with his hand behind his
+ear.
+
+"What's that?" he said.  "What's he saying?  I can't hear."
+
+Emily reached forward to pat Val's hand.
+
+"It's only that Val has joined the Yeomanry, James; it's very nice for
+him.  He'll look his best in uniform."
+
+"Joined the--rubbish!" came from James, tremulously loud.  "You can't see
+two yards before your nose.  He--he'll have to go out there.  Why! he'll
+be fighting before he knows where he is."
+
+Val saw Imogen's eyes admiring him, and his mother still and fashionable
+with her handkerchief before her lips.
+
+Suddenly his uncle spoke.
+
+"You're under age."
+
+"I thought of that," smiled Val; "I gave my age as twenty-one."
+
+He heard his grandmother's admiring, "Well, Val, that was plucky of you;"
+was conscious of Warmson deferentially filling his champagne glass; and
+of his grandfather's voice moaning: "I don't know what'll become of you
+if you go on like this."
+
+Imogen was patting his shoulder, his uncle looking at him sidelong; only
+his mother sat unmoving, till, affected by her stillness, Val said:
+
+"It's all right, you know; we shall soon have them on the run.  I only
+hope I shall come in for something."
+
+He felt elated, sorry, tremendously important all at once.  This would
+show Uncle Soames, and all the Forsytes, how to be sportsmen. He had
+certainly done something heroic and exceptional in giving his age as
+twenty-one.
+
+Emily's voice brought him back to earth.
+
+"You mustn't have a second glass, James.  Warmson!"
+
+"Won't they be astonished at Timothy's!" burst out Imogen.  "I'd give
+anything to see their faces.  Do you have a sword, Val, or only a
+popgun?"
+
+"What made you?"
+
+His uncle's voice produced a slight chill in the pit of Val's stomach.
+Made him?  How answer that?  He was grateful for his grandmother's
+comfortable:
+
+"Well, I think it's very plucky of Val.  I'm sure he'll make a splendid
+soldier; he's just the figure for it.  We shall all be proud of him."
+
+"What had young Jolly Forsyte to do with it?  Why did you go together?"
+pursued Soames, uncannily relentless.  "I thought you weren't friendly
+with him?"
+
+"I'm not," mumbled Val, "but I wasn't going to be beaten by him." He saw
+his uncle look at him quite differently, as if approving. His grandfather
+was nodding too, his grandmother tossing her head. They all approved of
+his not being beaten by that cousin of his. There must be a reason!  Val
+was dimly conscious of some disturbing point outside his range of vision;
+as it might be, the unlocated centre of a cyclone.  And, staring at his
+uncle's face, he had a quite unaccountable vision of a woman with dark
+eyes, gold hair, and a white neck, who smelt nice, and had pretty silken
+clothes which he had liked feeling when he was quite small.  By Jove,
+yes! Aunt Irene!  She used to kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once,
+playfully, because he liked it--so soft.  His grandfather was speaking:
+
+"What's his father doing?"
+
+"He's away in Paris," Val said, staring at the very queer expression on
+his uncle's face, like--like that of a snarling dog.
+
+"Artists!" said James.  The word coming from the very bottom of his soul,
+broke up the dinner.
+
+Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-fruits of
+heroism, like medlars over-ripe.
+
+She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor's at once and have
+his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they gave him.
+But he could feel that she was very much upset.  It was on his lips to
+console her with the spoken thought that he would be out of the way of
+that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen, and the knowledge that
+his mother would not be out of the way, restrained him.  He felt
+aggrieved that she did not seem more proud of him.  When Imogen had gone
+to bed, he risked the emotional.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother."
+
+"Well, I must make the best of it.  We must try and get you a commission
+as soon as we can; then you won't have to rough it so. Do you know any
+drill, Val?"
+
+"Not a scrap."
+
+"I hope they won't worry you much.  I must take you about to get the
+things to-morrow.  Good-night; kiss me."
+
+With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, 'I hope
+they won't worry you much,' in his ears, he sat down to a cigarette,
+before a dying fire.  The heat was out of him--the glow of cutting a
+dash.  It was all a damned heart-aching bore.  'I'll be even with that
+chap Jolly,' he thought, trailing up the stairs, past the room where his
+mother was biting her pillow to smother a sense of desolation which was
+trying to make her sob.
+
+And soon only one of the diners at James' was awake--Soames, in his
+bedroom above his father's.
+
+So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris--what was he doing there? Hanging
+round Irene!  The last report from Polteed had hinted that there might be
+something soon.  Could it be this?  That fellow, with his beard and his
+cursed amused way of speaking--son of the old man who had given him the
+nickname 'Man of Property,' and bought the fatal house from him.  Soames
+had ever resented having had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never
+forgiven his uncle for having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.
+
+Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across the
+Park.  Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of traffic; a frost
+coming; bare trees; a star or two.  'I'll see Polteed to-morrow,' he
+thought.  'By God!  I'm mad, I think, to want her still.  That fellow!
+If...?  Um!  No!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR
+
+Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin Hill on
+Sunday morning.  He had sent no word beforehand, so walked up from the
+station, entering his domain by the coppice gate. Coming to the log seat
+fashioned out of an old fallen trunk, he sat down, first laying his
+overcoat on it.
+
+'Lumbago!'  he thought; 'that's what love ends in at my time of life!'
+And suddenly Irene seemed very near, just as she had been that day of
+rambling at Fontainebleau when they had sat on a log to eat their lunch.
+Hauntingly near!  Odour drawn out of fallen leaves by the pale-filtering
+sunlight soaked his nostrils.  'I'm glad it isn't spring,' he thought.
+With the scent of sap, and the song of birds, and the bursting of the
+blossoms, it would have been unbearable!  'I hope I shall be over it by
+then, old fool that I am!' and picking up his coat, he walked on into the
+field.  He passed the pond and mounted the hill slowly.
+
+Near the top a hoarse barking greeted him.  Up on the lawn above the
+fernery he could see his old dog Balthasar.  The animal, whose dim eyes
+took his master for a stranger, was warning the world against him.
+Jolyon gave his special whistle.  Even at that distance of a hundred
+yards and more he could see the dawning recognition in the obese
+brown-white body.  The old dog got off his haunches, and his tail,
+close-curled over his back, began a feeble, excited fluttering; he came
+waddling forward, gathered momentum, and disappeared over the edge of the
+fernery.  Jolyon expected to meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar
+was not there, and, rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery.  On his
+fat side, looking up with eyes already glazing, the old dog lay.
+
+"What is it, my poor old man?" cried Jolyon.  Balthasar's curled and
+fluffy tail just moved; his filming eyes seemed saying: "I can't get up,
+master, but I'm glad to see you."
+
+Jolyon knelt down; his eyes, very dimmed, could hardly see the slowly
+ceasing heave of the dog's side.  He raised the head a little--very
+heavy.
+
+"What is it, dear man?  Where are you hurt?" The tail fluttered once; the
+eyes lost the look of life.  Jolyon passed his hands all over the inert
+warm bulk.  There was nothing--the heart had simply failed in that obese
+body from the emotion of his master's return. Jolyon could feel the
+muzzle, where a few whitish bristles grew, cooling already against his
+lips.  He stayed for some minutes kneeling; with his hand beneath the
+stiffening head.  The body was very heavy when he bore it to the top of
+the field; leaves had drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of
+them; there was no wind, and they would keep him from curious eyes until
+the afternoon.  'I'll bury him myself,' he thought.  Eighteen years had
+gone since he first went into the St. John's Wood house with that tiny
+puppy in his pocket.  Strange that the old dog should die just now!  Was
+it an omen?  He turned at the gate to look back at that russet mound,
+then went slowly towards the house, very choky in the throat.
+
+June was at home; she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news of
+Jolly's enlistment.  His patriotism had conquered her feeling for the
+Boers.  The atmosphere of his house was strange and pocketty when Jolyon
+came in and told them of the dog Balthasar's death. The news had a
+unifying effect.  A link with the past had snapped--the dog Balthasar!
+Two of them could remember nothing before his day; to June he represented
+the last years of her grandfather; to Jolyon that life of domestic stress
+and aesthetic struggle before he came again into the kingdom of his
+father's love and wealth! And he was gone!
+
+In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out to the
+field.  They chose a spot close to the russet mound, so that they need
+not carry him far, and, carefully cutting off the surface turf, began to
+dig.  They dug in silence for ten minutes, and then rested.
+
+"Well, old man," said Jolyon, "so you thought you ought?"
+
+"Yes," answered Jolly; "I don't want to a bit, of course."
+
+How exactly those words represented Jolyon's own state of mind
+
+"I admire you for it, old boy.  I don't believe I should have done it at
+your age--too much of a Forsyte, I'm afraid.  But I suppose the type gets
+thinner with each generation.  Your son, if you have one, may be a pure
+altruist; who knows?"
+
+"He won't be like me, then, Dad; I'm beastly selfish."
+
+"No, my dear, that you clearly are not."  Jolly shook his head, and they
+dug again.
+
+"Strange life a dog's," said Jolyon suddenly: "The only four-footer with
+rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!"
+
+Jolly looked at his father.
+
+"Do you believe in God, Dad?  I've never known."
+
+At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to make a
+light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back tried by the
+digging.
+
+"What do you mean by God?" he said; "there are two irreconcilable ideas
+of God.  There's the Unknowable Creative Principle--one believes in That.
+And there's the Sum of altruism in man--naturally one believes in That."
+
+"I see.  That leaves out Christ, doesn't it?"
+
+Jolyon stared.  Christ, the link between those two ideas!  Out of the
+mouth of babes!  Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at last!
+The sublime poem of the Christ life was man's attempt to join those two
+irreconcilable conceptions of God.  And since the Sum of human altruism
+was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative Principle as anything else
+in Nature and the Universe, a worse link might have been chosen after
+all!  Funny--how one went through life without seeing it in that sort of
+way!
+
+"What do you think, old man?" he said.
+
+Jolly frowned.  "Of course, my first year we talked a good bit about that
+sort of thing.  But in the second year one gives it up; I don't know
+why--it's awfully interesting."
+
+Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it his first
+year at Cambridge, and given it up in his second.
+
+"I suppose," said Jolly, "it's the second God, you mean, that old
+Balthasar had a sense of."
+
+"Yes, or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of
+something outside himself."
+
+"But wasn't that just selfish emotion, really?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head.  "No, dogs are not pure Forsytes, they love
+something outside themselves."
+
+Jolly smiled.
+
+"Well, I think I'm one," he said.  "You know, I only enlisted because I
+dared Val Dartie to."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"We bar each other," said Jolly shortly.
+
+"Ah!" muttered Jolyon.  So the feud went on, unto the third
+generation--this modern feud which had no overt expression?
+
+'Shall I tell the boy about it?' he thought.  But to what end--if he had
+to stop short of his own part?
+
+And Jolly thought: 'It's for Holly to let him know about that chap. If
+she doesn't, it means she doesn't want him told, and I should be
+sneaking.  Anyway, I've stopped it.  I'd better leave well alone!'
+
+So they dug on in silence, till Jolyon said:
+
+"Now, old man, I think it's big enough."  And, resting on their spades,
+they gazed down into the hole where a few leaves had drifted already on a
+sunset wind.
+
+"I can't bear this part of it," said Jolyon suddenly.
+
+"Let me do it, Dad.  He never cared much for me."
+
+Jolyon shook his head.
+
+"We'll lift him very gently, leaves and all.  I'd rather not see him
+again.  I'll take his head.  Now!"
+
+With extreme care they raised the old dog's body, whose faded tan and
+white showed here and there under the leaves stirred by the wind.  They
+laid it, heavy, cold, and unresponsive, in the grave, and Jolly spread
+more leaves over it, while Jolyon, deeply afraid to show emotion before
+his son, began quickly shovelling the earth on to that still shape.
+There went the past!  If only there were a joyful future to look forward
+to!  It was like stamping down earth on one's own life.  They replaced
+the turf carefully on the smooth little mound, and, grateful that they
+had spared each other's feelings, returned to the house arm-in-arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TIMOTHY STAYS THE ROT
+
+On Forsyte 'Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together with the
+report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become a Red Cross
+nurse.  These events were so extreme, so subversive of pure Forsyteism,
+as to have a binding effect upon the family, and Timothy's was thronged
+next Sunday afternoon by members trying to find out what they thought
+about it all, and exchange with each other a sense of family credit.
+Giles and Jesse Hayman would no longer defend the coast but go to South
+Africa quite soon; Jolly and Val would be following in April; as to
+June--well, you never knew what she would really do.
+
+The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news from the
+seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in startling
+fashion by Timothy.  The youngest of the old Forsytes--scarcely eighty,
+in fact popularly supposed to resemble their father, 'Superior Dosset,'
+even in his best-known characteristic of drinking Sherry--had been
+invisible for so many years that he was almost mythical.  A long
+generation had elapsed since the risks of a publisher's business had
+worked on his nerves at the age of forty, so that he had got out with a
+mere thirty-five thousand pounds in the world, and started to make his
+living by careful investment.  Putting by every year, at compound
+interest, he had doubled his capital in forty years without having once
+known what it was like to shake in his shoes over money matters.  He was
+now putting aside some two thousand a year, and, with the care he was
+taking of himself, expected, so Aunt Hester said, to double his capital
+again before he died.  What he would do with it then, with his sisters
+dead and himself dead, was often mockingly queried by free spirits such
+as Francie, Euphemia, or young Nicholas' second, Christopher, whose
+spirit was so free that he had actually said he was going on the stage.
+All admitted, however, that this was best known to Timothy himself, and
+possibly to Soames, who never divulged a secret.
+
+Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and robust
+appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion, grey hair, and
+little of the refinement of feature with which most of the Forsytes had
+been endowed by 'Superior Dosset's' wife, a woman of some beauty and a
+gentle temperament.  It was known that he had taken surprising interest
+in the war, sticking flags into a map ever since it began, and there was
+uneasiness as to what would happen if the English were driven into the
+sea, when it would be almost impossible for him to put the flags in the
+right places.  As to his knowledge of family movements or his views about
+them, little was known, save that Aunt Hester was always declaring that
+he was very upset.  It was, then, in the nature of a portent when
+Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after the evacuation of Spion Kop,
+became conscious, one after the other, of a presence seated in the only
+really comfortable armchair, back to the light, concealing the lower part
+of his face with a large hand, and were greeted by the awed voice of Aunt
+Hester:
+
+"Your Uncle Timothy, my dear."
+
+Timothy's greeting to them all was somewhat identical; and rather, as it
+were, passed over by him than expressed:
+
+"How de do?  How de do?  'Xcuse me gettin' up!"
+
+Francie was present, and Eustace had come in his car; Winifred had
+brought Imogen, breaking the ice of the restitution proceedings with the
+warmth of family appreciation at Val's enlistment; and Marian Tweetyman
+with the last news of Giles and Jesse.  These with Aunt Juley and Hester,
+young Nicholas, Euphemia, and--of all people!--George, who had come with
+Eustace in the car, constituted an assembly worthy of the family's
+palmiest days.  There was not one chair vacant in the whole of the little
+drawing-room, and anxiety was felt lest someone else should arrive.
+
+The constraint caused by Timothy's presence having worn off a little,
+conversation took a military turn.  George asked Aunt Juley when she was
+going out with the Red Cross, almost reducing her to a state of gaiety;
+whereon he turned to Nicholas and said:
+
+"Young Nick's a warrior bold, isn't he?  When's he going to don the wild
+khaki?"
+
+Young Nicholas, smiling with a sort of sweet deprecation, intimated that
+of course his mother was very anxious.
+
+"The Dromios are off, I hear," said George, turning to Marian Tweetyman;
+"we shall all be there soon.  En avant, the Forsytes! Roll, bowl, or
+pitch!  Who's for a cooler?"
+
+Aunt Juley gurgled, George was so droll!  Should Hester get Timothy's
+map?  Then he could show them all where they were.
+
+At a sound from Timothy, interpreted as assent, Aunt Hester left the
+room.
+
+George pursued his image of the Forsyte advance, addressing Timothy as
+Field Marshal; and Imogen, whom he had noted at once for 'a pretty
+filly,'--as Vivandiere; and holding his top hat between his knees, he
+began to beat it with imaginary drumsticks.  The reception accorded to
+his fantasy was mixed.  All laughed--George was licensed; but all felt
+that the family was being 'rotted'; and this seemed to them unnatural,
+now that it was going to give five of its members to the service of the
+Queen.  George might go too far; and there was relief when he got up,
+offered his arm to Aunt Juley, marched up to Timothy, saluted him, kissed
+his aunt with mock passion, said, "Oh! what a treat, dear papa!  Come on,
+Eustace!" and walked out, followed by the grave and fastidious Eustace,
+who had never smiled.
+
+Aunt Juley's bewildered, "Fancy not waiting for the map!  You mustn't
+mind him, Timothy.  He's so droll!" broke the hush, and Timothy removed
+the hand from his mouth.
+
+"I don't know what things are comin' to," he was heard to say. "What's
+all this about goin' out there?  That's not the way to beat those Boers."
+
+Francie alone had the hardihood to observe: "What is, then, Uncle
+Timothy?"
+
+"All this new-fangled volunteerin' and expense--lettin' money out of the
+country."
+
+Just then Aunt Hester brought in the map, handling it like a baby with
+eruptions.  With the assistance of Euphemia it was laid on the piano, a
+small Colwood grand, last played on, it was believed, the summer before
+Aunt Ann died, thirteen years ago.  Timothy rose.  He walked over to the
+piano, and stood looking at his map while they all gathered round.
+
+"There you are," he said; "that's the position up to date; and very poor
+it is.  H'm!"
+
+"Yes," said Francie, greatly daring, "but how are you going to alter it,
+Uncle Timothy, without more men?"
+
+"Men!" said Timothy; "you don't want men--wastin' the country's money.
+You want a Napoleon, he'd settle it in a month."
+
+"But if you haven't got him, Uncle Timothy?"
+
+"That's their business," replied Timothy.  "What have we kept the Army up
+for--to eat their heads off in time of peace!  They ought to be ashamed
+of themselves, comin' on the country to help them like this!  Let every
+man stick to his business, and we shall get on."
+
+And looking round him, he added almost angrily:
+
+"Volunteerin', indeed!  Throwin' good money after bad!  We must save!
+Conserve energy that's the only way."  And with a prolonged sound, not
+quite a sniff and not quite a snort, he trod on Euphemia's toe, and went
+out, leaving a sensation and a faint scent of barley-sugar behind him.
+
+The effect of something said with conviction by one who has evidently
+made a sacrifice to say it is ever considerable.  And the eight Forsytes
+left behind, all women except young Nicholas, were silent for a moment
+round the map.  Then Francie said:
+
+"Really, I think he's right, you know.  After all, what is the Army for?
+They ought to have known.  It's only encouraging them."
+
+"My dear!" cried Aunt Juley, "but they've been so progressive. Think of
+their giving up their scarlet.  They were always so proud of it.  And now
+they all look like convicts.  Hester and I were saying only yesterday we
+were sure they must feel it very much. Fancy what the Iron Duke would
+have said!"
+
+"The new colour's very smart," said Winifred; "Val looks quite nice in
+his."
+
+Aunt Juley sighed.
+
+"I do so wonder what Jolyon's boy is like.  To think we've never seen
+him!  His father must be so proud of him."
+
+"His father's in Paris," said Winifred.
+
+Aunt Hester's shoulder was seen to mount suddenly, as if to ward off her
+sister's next remark, for Juley's crumpled cheeks had gushed.
+
+"We had dear little Mrs. MacAnder here yesterday, just back from Paris.
+And whom d'you think she saw there in the street?  You'll never guess."
+
+"We shan't try, Auntie," said Euphemia.
+
+"Irene!  Imagine!  After all this time; walking with a fair beard...."
+
+"Auntie! you'll kill me!  A fair beard...."
+
+"I was going to say," said Aunt Juley severely, "a fair-bearded
+gentleman.  And not a day older; she was always so pretty," she added,
+with a sort of lingering apology.
+
+"Oh! tell us about her, Auntie," cried Imogen; "I can just remember her.
+She's the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn't she?  And they're such
+fun."
+
+Aunt Hester sat down.  Really, Juley had done it now!
+
+"She wasn't much of a skeleton as I remember her," murmured Euphemia,
+"extremely well-covered."
+
+"My dear!" said Aunt Juley, "what a peculiar way of putting it--not very
+nice."
+
+"No, but what was she like?" persisted Imogen.
+
+"I'll tell you, my child," said Francie; "a kind of modern Venus, very
+well-dressed."
+
+Euphemia said sharply: "Venus was never dressed, and she had blue eyes of
+melting sapphire."
+
+At this juncture Nicholas took his leave.
+
+"Mrs. Nick is awfully strict," said Francie with a laugh.
+
+"She has six children," said Aunt Juley; "it's very proper she should be
+careful."
+
+"Was Uncle Soames awfully fond of her?" pursued the inexorable Imogen,
+moving her dark luscious eyes from face to face.
+
+Aunt Hester made a gesture of despair, just as Aunt Juley answered:
+
+"Yes, your Uncle Soames was very much attached to her."
+
+"I suppose she ran off with someone?"
+
+"No, certainly not; that is--not precisely.'
+
+"What did she do, then, Auntie?"
+
+"Come along, Imogen," said Winifred, "we must be getting back."
+
+But Aunt Juley interjected resolutely: "She--she didn't behave at all
+well."
+
+"Oh, bother!" cried Imogen; "that's as far as I ever get."
+
+"Well, my dear," said Francie, "she had a love affair which ended with
+the young man's death; and then she left your uncle.  I always rather
+liked her."
+
+"She used to give me chocolates," murmured Imogen, "and smell nice."
+
+"Of course!" remarked Euphemia.
+
+"Not of course at all!" replied Francie, who used a particularly
+expensive essence of gillyflower herself.
+
+"I can't think what we are about," said Aunt Juley, raising her hands,
+"talking of such things!"
+
+"Was she divorced?" asked Imogen from the door.
+
+"Certainly not," cried Aunt Juley; "that is--certainly not."
+
+A sound was heard over by the far door.  Timothy had re-entered the back
+drawing-room.  "I've come for my map," he said.  "Who's been divorced?"
+
+"No one, Uncle," replied Francie with perfect truth.
+
+Timothy took his map off the piano.
+
+"Don't let's have anything of that sort in the family," he said. "All
+this enlistin's bad enough.  The country's breakin' up; I don't know what
+we're comin' to."  He shook a thick finger at the room: "Too many women
+nowadays, and they don't know what they want."
+
+So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went out as if
+afraid of being answered.
+
+The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued murmur, out of
+which emerged Francie's, "Really, the Forsytes!" and Aunt Juley's: "He
+must have his feet in mustard and hot water to-night, Hester; will you
+tell Jane?  The blood has gone to his head again, I'm afraid...."
+
+That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after dinner, she
+dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:
+
+"Hester, I can't think where I've heard that dear Soames wants Irene to
+come back to him again.  Who was it told us that George had made a funny
+drawing of him with the words, 'He won't be happy till he gets it'?"
+
+"Eustace," answered Aunt Hester from behind The Times; "he had it in his
+pocket, but he wouldn't show it us."
+
+Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating.  The clock ticked, The Times crackled,
+the fire sent forth its rustling purr.  Aunt Juley dropped another
+stitch.
+
+"Hester," she said, "I have had such a dreadful thought."
+
+"Then don't tell me," said Aunt Hester quickly.
+
+"Oh! but I must.  You can't think how dreadful!"  Her voice sank to a
+whisper:
+
+"Jolyon--Jolyon, they say, has a--has a fair beard, now."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+PROGRESS OF THE CHASE
+
+Two days after the dinner at James', Mr. Polteed provided Soames with
+food for thought.
+
+"A gentleman," he said, consulting the key concealed in his left hand,
+"47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17 during the last
+month in Paris.  But at present there seems to have been nothing very
+conclusive.  The meetings have all been in public places, without
+concealment--restaurants, the Opera, the Comique, the Louvre, Luxembourg
+Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and so forth. She has not yet been traced
+to his rooms, nor vice versa.  They went to Fontainebleau--but nothing of
+value.  In short, the situation is promising, but requires patience."
+And, looking up suddenly, he added:
+
+"One rather curious point--47 has the same name as--er--31!"
+
+'The fellow knows I'm her husband,' thought Soames.
+
+"Christian name--an odd one--Jolyon," continued Mr. Polteed.  "We know
+his address in Paris and his residence here.  We don't wish, of course,
+to be running a wrong hare."
+
+"Go on with it, but be careful," said Soames doggedly.
+
+Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his secret
+made him all the more reticent.
+
+"Excuse me," said Mr. Polteed, "I'll just see if there's anything fresh
+in."
+
+He returned with some letters.  Relocking the door, he glanced at the
+envelopes.
+
+"Yes, here's a personal one from 19 to myself."
+
+"Well?" said Soames.
+
+ "Um!" said Mr. Polteed, "she says: '47 left for England to-day.
+Address on his baggage: Robin Hill.  Parted from 17 in Louvre
+Gallery at 3.30; nothing very striking.  Thought it best to stay
+and continue observation of 17.  You will deal with 47 in England
+if you think desirable, no doubt.'"  And Mr. Polteed lifted an
+unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing
+material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of
+business.  "Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful make-up.
+Not cheap, but earns her money well.  There's no suspicion of being
+shadowed so far.  But after a time, as you know, sensitive people
+are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything definite to
+go on.  I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and keeping an eye
+on 47.  We can't get at correspondence without great risk.  I
+hardly advise that at this stage.  But you can tell your client
+that it's looking up very well."  And again his narrowed eyes
+gleamed at his taciturn customer.
+
+"No," said Soames suddenly, "I prefer that you should keep the watch
+going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with this end."
+
+"Very well," replied Mr. Polteed, "we can do it."
+
+"What--what is the manner between them?"
+
+"I'll read you what she says," said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau
+drawer and taking out a file of papers; "she sums it up somewhere
+confidentially.  Yes, here it is!  '17 very attractive--conclude 47,
+longer in the tooth' (slang for age, you know)--'distinctly gone--waiting
+his time--17 perhaps holding off for terms, impossible to say without
+knowing more.  But inclined to think on the whole--doesn't know her
+mind--likely to act on impulse some day.  Both have style.'"
+
+"What does that mean?" said Soames between close lips.
+
+"Well," murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white teeth, "an
+expression we use.  In other words, it's not likely to be a weekend
+business--they'll come together seriously or not at all."
+
+"H'm!" muttered Soames, "that's all, is it?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Polteed, "but quite promising."
+
+'Spider!' thought Soames.  "Good-day!"
+
+He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria Station and
+take the Underground into the City.  For so late in January it was warm;
+sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the frosty grass--an illumined
+cobweb of a day.
+
+Little spiders--and great spiders!  And the greatest spinner of all, his
+own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads round any clear way
+out.  What was that fellow hanging round Irene for?  Was it really as
+Polteed suggested?  Or was Jolyon but taking compassion on her
+loneliness, as he would call it--sentimental radical chap that he had
+always been?  If it were, indeed, as Polteed hinted!  Soames stood still.
+It could not be!  The fellow was seven years older than himself, no
+better looking!  No richer! What attraction had he?
+
+'Besides, he's come back,' he thought; 'that doesn't look---I'll go and
+see him!' and, taking out a card, he wrote:
+
+"If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall be at
+the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could come to the Hotch
+Potch if you prefer it.  I want to see you.--S. F."
+
+He walked up St.  James's Street and confided it to the porter at the
+Hotch Potch.
+
+"Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in," he said, and took
+one of the new motor cabs into the City....
+
+Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face towards
+the Connoisseurs.  What did Soames want now?  Had he got wind of Paris?
+And stepping across St. James's Street, he determined to make no secret
+of his visit.  'But it won't do,' he thought, 'to let him know she's
+there, unless he knows already.' In this complicated state of mind he was
+conducted to where Soames was drinking tea in a small bay-window.
+
+"No tea, thanks," said Jolyon, "but I'll go on smoking if I may."
+
+The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were lighted;
+the two cousins sat waiting on each other.
+
+"You've been in Paris, I hear," said Soames at last.
+
+"Yes; just back."
+
+"Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?" Jolyon nodded.
+
+"You didn't happen to see Irene, I suppose.  It appears she's abroad
+somewhere."
+
+Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: "Yes, I saw her."
+
+"How was she?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his chair.
+
+"When I saw you last," he said, "I was in two minds.  We talked, and you
+expressed your opinion.  I don't wish to reopen that discussion.  I only
+wanted to say this: My position with her is extremely difficult.  I don't
+want you to go using your influence against me.  What happened is a very
+long time ago.  I'm going to ask her to let bygones be bygones."
+
+"You have asked her, you know," murmured Jolyon.
+
+"The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock.  But the more she
+thinks of it, the more she must see that it's the only way out for both
+of us."
+
+"That's not my impression of her state of mind," said Jolyon with
+particular calm.  "And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the matter if
+you think reason comes into it at all."
+
+He saw his cousin's pale face grow paler--he had used, without knowing
+it, Irene's own words.
+
+"Thanks," muttered Soames, "but I see things perhaps more plainly than
+you think.  I only want to be sure that you won't try to influence her
+against me."
+
+"I don't know what makes you think I have any influence," said Jolyon;
+"but if I have I'm bound to use it in the direction of what I think is
+her happiness.  I am what they call a 'feminist,' I believe."
+
+"Feminist!" repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time.  "Does that mean
+that you're against me?"
+
+"Bluntly," said Jolyon, "I'm against any woman living with any man whom
+she definitely dislikes.  It appears to me rotten."
+
+"And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into her
+mind."
+
+"I am not likely to be seeing her."
+
+"Not going back to Paris?"
+
+"Not so far as I know," said Jolyon, conscious of the intent watchfulness
+in Soames' face.
+
+"Well, that's all I had to say.  Anyone who comes between man and wife,
+you know, incurs heavy responsibility."
+
+Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved away,
+leaving Soames staring after him.  'We Forsytes,' thought Jolyon, hailing
+a cab, 'are very civilised.  With simpler folk that might have come to a
+row.  If it weren't for my boy going to the war....'  The war!  A gust of
+his old doubt swept over him.  A precious war!  Domination of peoples or
+of women!  Attempts to master and possess those who did not want you!
+The negation of gentle decency!  Possession, vested rights; and anyone
+'agin' 'em--outcast!  'Thank Heaven!'  he thought, 'I always felt "agin"
+'em, anyway!'  Yes!  Even before his first disastrous marriage he could
+remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial suits
+of women trying to be free of men they loathed.  Parsons would have it
+that freedom of soul and body were quite different things!  Pernicious
+doctrine!  Body and soul could not thus be separated.  Free will was the
+strength of any tie, and not its weakness.  'I ought to have told
+Soames,' he thought, 'that I think him comic.  Ah! but he's tragic, too!'
+Was there anything, indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved
+by his own possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even
+enter fully into what another person felt!  'I must write and warn her,'
+he thought; 'he's going to have another try.'  And all the way home to
+Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son which
+prevented him from posting back to Paris....
+
+But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing ache--a
+jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this fellow held
+precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of resistance to his
+way out.  'Does that mean that you're against me?' he had got nothing out
+of that disingenuous question. Feminist!  Phrasey fellow!  'I mustn't
+rush things,' he thought. 'I have some breathing space; he's not going
+back to Paris, unless he was lying.  I'll let the spring come!'  Though
+how the spring could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not
+tell. And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from
+pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: 'Nothing seems
+any good--nothing seems worth while.  I'm loney--that's the trouble.'
+
+He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark street
+below a church--passing, turning her neck so that he caught the gleam of
+her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark hat, which had gold
+spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind. He opened his eyes--so
+vividly he had seen her!  A woman was passing below, but not she!  Oh no,
+there was nothing there!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+'HERE WE ARE AGAIN!'
+
+Imogen's frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her mother
+and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of March.  With
+Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection.  It took her mind off
+the slowly approaching rite which would give her a freedom but doubtfully
+desired; took her mind, too, off her boy and his fast approaching
+departure for a war from which the news remained disquieting.  Like bees
+busy on summer flowers, or bright gadflies hovering and darting over
+spiky autumn blossoms, she and her 'little daughter,' tall nearly as
+herself and with a bust measurement not far inferior, hovered in the
+shops of Regent Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond
+Street, lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics.  Dozens of young
+women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before Winifred
+and Imogen, draped in 'creations.'  The models--'Very new, modom; quite
+the latest thing--' which those two reluctantly turned down, would have
+filled a museum; the models which they were obliged to have nearly
+emptied James' bank.  It was no good doing things by halves, Winifred
+felt, in view of the need for making this first and sole untarnished
+season a conspicuous success. Their patience in trying the patience of
+those impersonal creatures who swam about before them could alone have
+been displayed by such as were moved by faith.  It was for Winifred a
+long prostration before her dear goddess Fashion, fervent as a Catholic
+might make before the Virgin; for Imogen an experience by no means too
+unpleasant--she often looked so nice, and flattery was implicit
+everywhere: in a word it was 'amusing.'
+
+On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted
+Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and
+Baker's, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with cream, turned
+homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening touched with spring.
+Opening the door--freshly painted a light olive-green; nothing neglected
+that year to give Imogen a good send-off--Winifred passed towards the
+silver basket to see if anyone had called, and suddenly her nostrils
+twitched.  What was that scent?
+
+Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood absorbed.
+Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her breast, Winifred
+said:
+
+"Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner."
+
+Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs.  Winifred heard the door of
+her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath.  Was it spring
+tickling her senses--whipping up nostalgia for her 'clown,' against all
+wisdom and outraged virtue?  A male scent!  A faint reek of cigars and
+lavender-water not smelt since that early autumn night six months ago,
+when she had called him 'the limit.' Whence came it, or was it ghost of
+scent--sheer emanation from memory?  She looked round her.  Nothing--not
+a thing, no tiniest disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom.  A
+little day-dream of a scent--illusory, saddening, silly!  In the silver
+basket were new cards, two with 'Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,' and one
+with 'Mr. Polegate Thom' thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled
+severe. 'I must be tired,' she thought, 'I'll go and lie down.'  Upstairs
+the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it evening
+light; and she passed on up to her bedroom.  This, too, was
+half-curtained and dim, for it was six o'clock.  Winifred threw off her
+coat--that scent again!--then stood, as if shot, transfixed against the
+bed-rail.  Something dark had risen from the sofa in the far corner.  A
+word of horror--in her family--escaped her: "God!"
+
+"It's I--Monty," said a voice.
+
+Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch of the
+light hanging above her dressing-table.  He appeared just on the rim of
+the light's circumference, emblazoned from the absence of his watch-chain
+down to boots neat and sooty brown, but--yes!--split at the toecap.  His
+chest and face were shadowy.  Surely he was thin--or was it a trick of
+the light?  He advanced, lighted now from toe-cap to the top of his dark
+head--surely a little grizzled! His complexion had darkened, sallowed;
+his black moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines
+which she did not know about his face.  There was no pin in his tie.  His
+suit--ah!--she knew that--but how unpressed, unglossy!  She stared again
+at the toe-cap of his boot.  Something big and relentless had been 'at
+him,' had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him.  And she stayed, not
+speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the toe.
+
+"Well!" he said, "I got the order.  I'm back."
+
+Winifred's bosom began to heave.  The nostalgia for her husband which had
+rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper jealousy than any
+she had felt yet.  There he was--a dark, and as if harried, shadow of his
+sleek and brazen self!  What force had done this to him--squeezed him
+like an orange to its dry rind! That woman!
+
+"I'm back," he said again.  "I've had a beastly time.  By God!  I came
+steerage.  I've got nothing but what I stand up in, and that bag."
+
+"And who has the rest?" cried Winifred, suddenly alive.  "How dared you
+come?  You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order to come
+back.  Don't touch me!"
+
+They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so many
+years of nights together.  Many times, yes--many times she had wanted him
+back.  But now that he had come she was filled with this cold and deadly
+resentment.  He put his hand up to his moustache; but did not frizz and
+twist it in the old familiar way, he just pulled it downwards.
+
+"Gad!" he said: "If you knew the time I've had!"
+
+"I'm glad I don't!"
+
+"Are the kids all right?"
+
+Winifred nodded.  "How did you get in?"
+
+"With my key."
+
+"Then the maids don't know.  You can't stay here, Monty."
+
+He uttered a little sardonic laugh.
+
+"Where then?"
+
+"Anywhere."
+
+"Well, look at me!  That--that damned...."
+
+"If you mention her," cried Winifred, "I go straight out to Park Lane and
+I don't come back."
+
+Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it moved
+her.  He shut his eyes.  It was as if he had said: 'All right!  I'm dead
+to the world!'
+
+"You can have a room for the night," she said; "your things are still
+here.  Only Imogen is at home."
+
+He leaned back against the bed-rail.  "Well, it's in your hands," and his
+own made a writhing movement.  "I've been through it.  You needn't hit
+too hard--it isn't worth while.  I've been frightened; I've been
+frightened, Freddie."
+
+That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver through
+Winifred.
+
+'What am I to do with him?' she thought.  'What in God's name am I to do
+with him?'
+
+"Got a cigarette?"
+
+She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she
+couldn't sleep at night, and lighted it.  With that action the
+matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.
+
+"Go and have a hot bath.  I'll put some clothes out for you in the
+dressing-room.  We can talk later."
+
+He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her--they looked half-dead, or was it
+that the folds in the lids had become heavier?
+
+'He's not the same,' she thought.  He would never be quite the same
+again!  But what would he be?
+
+"All right!"  he said, and went towards the door.  He even moved
+differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it is
+worth while to move at all.
+
+When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she put
+out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room, then went
+downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky. Putting on her coat
+again, and listening a moment at the bathroom door, she went down and
+out.  In the street she hesitated.  Past seven o'clock!  Would Soames be
+at his Club or at Park Lane?  She turned towards the latter.  Back!
+
+Soames had always feared it--she had sometimes hoped it....  Back! So
+like him--clown that he was--with this: 'Here we are again!' to make
+fools of them all--of the Law, of Soames, of herself!
+
+Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging over
+her and the children!  What a relief!  Ah! but how to accept his return?
+That 'woman' had ravaged him, taken from him passion such as he had never
+bestowed on herself, such as she had not thought him capable of.  There
+was the sting!  That selfish, blatant 'clown' of hers, whom she herself
+had never really stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another
+woman!  Insulting!  Too insulting!  Not right, not decent to take him
+back!  And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now!
+He was as much her husband as ever--she had put herself out of court!
+And all he wanted, no doubt, was money--to keep him in cigars and
+lavender-water!  That scent!  'After all, I'm not old,' she thought, 'not
+old yet!'  But that woman who had reduced him to those words: 'I've been
+through it.  I've been frightened--frightened, Freddie!'  She neared her
+father's house, driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte
+undertow was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her
+property, to be held against a robbing world.  And so she came to James'.
+
+"Mr. Soames?  In his room?  I'll go up; don't say I'm here."
+
+Her brother was dressing.  She found him before a mirror, tying a black
+bow with an air of despising its ends.
+
+"Hullo!" he said, contemplating her in the glass; "what's wrong?"
+
+"Monty!" said Winifred stonily.
+
+Soames spun round.  "What!"
+
+"Back!"
+
+"Hoist," muttered Soames, "with our own petard.  Why the deuce didn't you
+let me try cruelty?  I always knew it was too much risk this way."
+
+"Oh! Don't talk about that!  What shall I do?"
+
+Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.
+
+"Well?" said Winifred impatiently.
+
+"What has he to say for himself?"
+
+"Nothing.  One of his boots is split across the toe."
+
+Soames stared at her.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "of course!  On his beam ends.  So--it begins again!
+This'll about finish father."
+
+"Can't we keep it from him?"
+
+"Impossible.  He has an uncanny flair for anything that's worrying."
+
+And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces. "There
+ought to be some way in law," he muttered, "to make him safe."
+
+"No," cried Winifred, "I won't be made a fool of again; I'd sooner put up
+with him."
+
+The two stared at each other.  Their hearts were full of feeling, but
+they could give it no expression--Forsytes that they were.
+
+"Where did you leave him?"
+
+"In the bath," and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh.  "The only thing
+he's brought back is lavender-water."
+
+"Steady!" said Soames, "you're thoroughly upset.  I'll go back with you."
+
+"What's the use?"
+
+"We ought to make terms with him."
+
+"Terms!  It'll always be the same.  When he recovers--cards and betting,
+drink and ....!"  She was silent, remembering the look on her husband's
+face.  The burnt child--the burnt child.  Perhaps...!
+
+"Recovers?" replied Soames: "Is he ill?"
+
+"No; burnt out; that's all."
+
+Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his coat
+and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau-de-Cologne,
+threaded his watch-chain, and said: "We haven't any luck."
+
+And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as if in
+that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own.
+
+"I'd like to see mother," she said.
+
+"She'll be with father in their room.  Come down quietly to the study.
+I'll get her."
+
+Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable for a
+Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine collection of
+Law Reports unopened for many years.  Here she stood, with her back to
+maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at the empty grate, till
+her mother came in followed by Soames.
+
+"Oh! my poor dear!" said Emily: "How miserable you look in here! This is
+too bad of him, really!"
+
+As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of all
+unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give her
+daughter a good hug.  But there was comfort in her cushioned voice, and
+her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace. Summoning pride
+and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred said in her most
+off-hand voice:
+
+"It's all right, Mother; no good fussing."
+
+"I don't see," said Emily, looking at Soames, "why Winifred shouldn't
+tell him that she'll prosecute him if he doesn't keep off the premises.
+He took her pearls; and if he's not brought them back, that's quite
+enough."
+
+Winifred smiled.  They would all plunge about with suggestions of this
+and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and that
+was--nothing.  The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort of
+victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground in her.
+No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home without the
+world knowing.
+
+"Well," said Emily, "come into the dining-room comfortably--you must stay
+and have dinner with us.  Leave it to me to tell your father."  And, as
+Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out the light.  Not till then
+did they see the disaster in the corridor.
+
+There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was standing
+with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him, so that his arms
+were not free and his silvered head looked cut off from his fashionably
+trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert. He stood, inimitably
+stork-like, with an expression as if he saw before him a frog too large
+to swallow.
+
+"What's all this?" he said.  "Tell your father?  You never tell me
+anything."
+
+The moment found Emily without reply.  It was Winifred who went up to
+him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms, said:
+
+"Monty's not gone bankrupt, Father.  He's only come back."
+
+They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad she
+had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth of root
+in that shadowy old Forsyte.  Something wry occurred about his shaven
+mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long silvery whiskers.
+Then he said with a sort of dignity: "He'll be the death of me.  I knew
+how it would be."
+
+"You mustn't worry, Father," said Winifred calmly.  "I mean to make him
+behave."
+
+"Ah!" said James.  "Here, take this thing off, I'm hot."  They unwound
+the shawl.  He turned, and walked firmly to the dining-room.
+
+"I don't want any soup," he said to Warmson, and sat down in his chair.
+They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while Warmson laid the
+fourth place.  When he left the room, James said: "What's he brought
+back?"
+
+"Nothing, Father."
+
+James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon. "Divorce!"
+he muttered; "rubbish!  What was I about?  I ought to have paid him an
+allowance to stay out of England.  Soames you go and propose it to him."
+
+It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was
+surprised when she said: "No, I'll keep him now he's back; he must just
+behave--that's all."
+
+They all looked at her.  It had always been known that Winifred had
+pluck.
+
+"Out there!" said James elliptically, "who knows what cut-throats! You
+look for his revolver!  Don't go to bed without.  You ought to have
+Warmson to sleep in the house.  I'll see him myself tomorrow."
+
+They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably:
+"That's right, James, we won't have any nonsense."
+
+"Ah!" muttered James darkly, "I can't tell."
+
+The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.
+
+When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father
+good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress that
+she put all the comfort she could into her voice.
+
+"It's all right, Daddy, dear; don't worry.  I shan't need anyone--he's
+quite bland.  I shall only be upset if you worry.  Good-night, bless
+you!"
+
+James repeated the words, "Bless you!" as if he did not quite know what
+they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.
+
+She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.
+
+Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed in a
+blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his head, and an
+extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.
+
+Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes after a
+blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood--parched, yet
+rested by the sun's retreat.  It was as if a little dew had come already
+on her burnt-up husband.
+
+He said apathetically: "I suppose you've been to Park Lane.  How's the
+old man?"
+
+Winifred could not help the bitter answer: "Not dead."
+
+He winced, actually he winced.
+
+"Understand, Monty," she said, "I will not have him worried.  If you
+aren't going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go anywhere.
+Have you had dinner?"
+
+No.
+
+"Would you like some?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Imogen offered me some.  I didn't want any."
+
+Imogen!  In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.
+
+"So you've seen her?  What did she say?"
+
+"She gave me a kiss."
+
+With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed. 'Yes!'
+she thought, 'he cares for her, not for me a bit.'
+
+Dartie's eyes were moving from side to side.
+
+"Does she know about me?" he said.
+
+It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed. He
+minded their knowing!
+
+"No.  Val knows.  The others don't; they only know you went away."
+
+She heard him sigh with relief.
+
+"But they shall know," she said firmly, "if you give me cause."
+
+"All right!" he muttered, "hit me!  I'm down!"
+
+Winifred went up to the bed.  "Look here, Monty!  I don't want to hit
+you.  I don't want to hurt you.  I shan't allude to anything. I'm not
+going to worry.  What's the use?" She was silent a moment. "I can't stand
+any more, though, and I won't!  You'd better know. You've made me suffer.
+But I used to be fond of you.  For the sake of that...."  She met the
+heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with the downward stare of her
+green-grey eyes; touched his hand suddenly, turned her back, and went
+into her room.
+
+She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings, thinking
+of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the bed in the
+other room; resolutely not 'worrying,' but gnawed by jealousy of what he
+had been through, and now and again just visited by pity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+OUTLANDISH NIGHT
+
+Soames doggedly let the spring come--no easy task for one conscious that
+time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no issue from
+the web anywhere visible.  Mr. Polteed reported nothing, except that his
+watch went on--costing a lot of money.  Val and his cousin were gone to
+the war, whence came news more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so
+far; James had retained his health; business prospered almost
+terribly--there was nothing to worry Soames except that he was 'held up,'
+could make no step in any direction.
+
+He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them think
+that he had 'piped off,' as James would have put it--he might want to
+'pipe on' again at any minute.  But he had to be so restrained and
+cautious that he would often pass the door of the Restaurant Bretagne
+without going in, and wander out of the purlieus of that region which
+always gave him the feeling of having been possessively irregular.
+
+He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most amazing
+crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing, jostling,
+grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses and mouth-organs,
+penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage of idiocy, as it seemed
+to him.  Mafeking!  Of course, it had been relieved!  Good!  But was that
+an excuse?  Who were these people, what were they, where had they come
+from into the West End?  His face was tickled, his ears whistled into.
+Girls cried: 'Keep your hair on, stucco!'  A youth so knocked off his
+top-hat that he recovered it with difficulty.  Crackers were exploding
+beneath his nose, between his feet.  He was bewildered, exasperated,
+offended. This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse
+had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters of whose existence he had
+heard, perhaps, but believed in never.  This, then, was the populace, the
+innumerable living negation of gentility and Forsyteism.  This
+was--egad!--Democracy!  It stank, yelled, was hideous!  In the East End,
+or even Soho, perhaps--but here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly!  What
+were the police about!  In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had
+never seen the cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could
+hardly believe his scorching eyes.  The whole thing was unspeakable!
+These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny; such
+swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing--and what laughter!
+
+Nothing sacred to them!  He shouldn't be surprised if they began to break
+windows.  In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter which
+people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing dervish of a
+crowd was swarming.  From the Club windows his own kind were looking out
+on them with regulated amusement.  They didn't realise!  Why, this was
+serious--might come to anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day
+they would come in different mood!  He remembered there had been a mob in
+the late eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and
+made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise.  They were
+hysterical--it wasn't English!  And all about the relief of a little
+town as big as--Watford, six thousand miles away.  Restraint, reserve!
+Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those indispensable
+attributes of property and culture, where were they? It wasn't English!
+No, it wasn't English!  So Soames brooded, threading his way on.  It was
+as if he had suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant 'for
+quiet possession' out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking and
+stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before.  Their want of
+stolidity, their want of reverence!  It was like discovering that
+nine-tenths of the people of England were foreigners.  And if that were
+so--then, anything might happen!
+
+At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt from
+racing, holding a false nose in his hand.
+
+"Hallo, Soames!" he said, "have a nose!"
+
+Soames responded with a pale smile.
+
+"Got this from one of these sportsmen," went on George, who had evidently
+been dining; "had to lay him out--for trying to bash my hat.  I say, one
+of these days we shall have to fight these chaps, they're getting so
+damned cheeky--all radicals and socialists. They want our goods.  You
+tell Uncle James that, it'll make him sleep."
+
+'In vino veritas,' thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed on up
+Hamilton Place.  There was but a trickle of roysterers in Park Lane, not
+very noisy.  And looking up at the houses he thought: 'After all, we're
+the backbone of the country.  They won't upset us easily.  Possession's
+nine points of the law.'
+
+But, as he closed the door of his father's house behind him, all that
+queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his mind almost
+as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had awakened in the warm clean
+morning comfort of his spring-mattressed bed.
+
+Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood still.
+
+A wife!  Somebody to talk things over with.  One had a right!  Damn it!
+One had a right!
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOAMES IN PARIS
+
+Soames had travelled little.  Aged nineteen he had made the 'petty tour'
+with his father, mother, and Winifred--Brussels, the Rhine, Switzerland,
+and home by way of Paris.  Aged twenty-seven, just when he began to take
+interest in pictures, he had spent five hot weeks in Italy, looking into
+the Renaissance--not so much in it as he had been led to expect--and a
+fortnight in Paris on his way back, looking into himself, as became a
+Forsyte surrounded by people so strongly self-centred and 'foreign' as
+the French.  His knowledge of their language being derived from his
+public school, he did not understand them when they spoke.  Silence he
+had found better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself.  He
+had disliked the look of the men's clothes, the closed-in cabs, the
+theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which smelled of
+beeswax.  He was too cautious and too shy to explore that side of Paris
+supposed by Forsytes to constitute its attraction under the rose; and as
+for a collector's bargain--not one to be had!  As Nicholas might have put
+it--they were a grasping lot.  He had come back uneasy, saying Paris was
+overrated.
+
+When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his third
+attempt on the centre of civilisation.  This time, however, the mountain
+was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply civilised than
+Paris, and perhaps he really was.  Moreover, he had a definite objective.
+This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of taste and immorality, but the
+prosecution of his own legitimate affairs.  He went, indeed, because
+things were getting past a joke. The watch went on and on,
+and--nothing--nothing!  Jolyon had never returned to Paris, and no one
+else was 'suspect!'  Busy with new and very confidential matters, Soames
+was realising more than ever how essential reputation is to a solicitor.
+But at night and in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought
+that time was always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as
+much 'in irons' as ever.  Since Mafeking night he had become aware that a
+'young fool of a doctor' was hanging round Annette.  Twice he had come
+across him--a cheerful young fool, not more than thirty.
+
+Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness--an indecent, extravagant
+sort of quality, which had no relation to facts.  The mixture of his
+desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture; and lately the
+thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she was being shadowed:
+It was this which finally decided him to go and see for himself; to go
+and once more try to break down her repugnance, her refusal to make her
+own and his path comparatively smooth once more.  If he failed
+again--well, he would see what she did with herself, anyway!
+
+He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to Forsytes,
+where practically nobody spoke French.  He had formed no plan.  He did
+not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she had no chance to
+evade him by flight.  And next morning he set out in bright weather.
+
+Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which almost
+annoyed Soames.  He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a little sideways in
+real curiosity.  He desired now to understand things French.  Was not
+Annette French?  There was much to be got out of his visit, if he could
+only get it.  In this laudable mood and the Place de la Concorde he was
+nearly run down three times. He came on the 'Cours la Reine,' where
+Irene's hotel was situated, almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed
+on his procedure. Crossing over to the river side, he noted the building,
+white and cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen through a screen
+of plane-tree leaves.  And, conscious that it would be far better to meet
+her casually in some open place than to risk a call, he sat down on a
+bench whence he could watch the entrance.  It was not quite eleven
+o'clock, and improbable that she had yet gone out. Some pigeons were
+strutting and preening their feathers in the pools of sunlight between
+the shadows of the plane-trees.  A workman in a blue blouse passed, and
+threw them crumbs from the paper which contained his dinner.  A 'bonne'
+coiffed with ribbon shepherded two little girls with pig-tails and
+frilled drawers.  A cab meandered by, whose cocher wore a blue coat and a
+black-glazed hat.  To Soames a kind of affectation seemed to cling about
+it all, a sort of picturesqueness which was out of date.  A theatrical
+people, the French!  He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a sense of
+injury that Fate should be casting his life into outlandish waters.  He
+shouldn't wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this foreign life; she had never
+been properly English--even to look at! And he began considering which of
+those windows could be hers under the green sunblinds.  How could he word
+what he had come to say so that it might pierce the defence of her proud
+obstinacy?  He threw the fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the
+thought: 'I can't stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs.  Better give it
+up and call on her in the late afternoon.'  But he still sat on, heard
+twelve strike, and then half-past.  'I'll wait till one,' he thought,
+'while I'm about it.'  But just then he started up, and shrinkingly sat
+down again.  A woman had come out in a cream-coloured frock, and was
+moving away under a fawn-coloured parasol. Irene herself!  He waited till
+she was too far away to recognise him, then set out after her.  She was
+strolling as though she had no particular objective; moving, if he
+remembered rightly, toward the Bois de Boulogne.  For half an hour at
+least he kept his distance on the far side of the way till she had passed
+into the Bois itself.  Was she going to meet someone after all?  Some
+confounded Frenchman--one of those 'Bel Ami' chaps, perhaps, who had
+nothing to do but hang about women--for he had read that book with
+difficulty and a sort of disgusted fascination.  He followed doggedly
+along a shady alley, losing sight of her now and then when the path
+curved.  And it came back to him how, long ago, one night in Hyde Park he
+had slid and sneaked from tree to tree, from seat to seat, hunting
+blindly, ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her and young Bosinney.
+The path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came on her sitting in front of
+a small fountain--a little green-bronze Niobe veiled in hair to her
+slender hips, gazing at the pool she had wept: He came on her so suddenly
+that he was past before he could turn and take off his hat.  She did not
+start up.  She had always had great self-command--it was one of the
+things he most admired in her, one of his greatest grievances against
+her, because he had never been able to tell what she was thinking.  Had
+she realised that he was following?  Her self-possession made him angry;
+and, disdaining to explain his presence, he pointed to the mournful
+little Niobe, and said:
+
+"That's rather a good thing."
+
+He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her composure.
+
+"I didn't want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A little lonely."  As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to look at
+the fountain and passed on.
+
+Irene's eyes followed her.
+
+"No," she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, "never lonely.  One
+has always one's shadow."
+
+Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, it's your own fault.  You can be free of it at any moment. Irene,
+come back to me, and be free."
+
+Irene laughed.
+
+"Don't!" cried Soames, stamping his foot; "it's inhuman.  Listen! Is
+there any condition I can make which will bring you back to me? If I
+promise you a separate house--and just a visit now and then?"
+
+Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.
+
+"None!  None!  None!  You may hunt me to the grave.  I will not come."
+
+Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.
+
+"Don't make a scene!" he said sharply.  And they both stood motionless,
+staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the sunlight was
+burnishing.
+
+"That's your last word, then," muttered Soames, clenching his hands; "you
+condemn us both."
+
+Irene bent her head.  "I can't come back.  Good-bye!"
+
+A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.
+
+"Stop!" he said, "and listen to me a moment.  You gave me a sacred
+vow--you came to me without a penny.  You had all I could give you. You
+broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you refused me a
+child; you've left me in prison; you--you still move me so that I want
+you--I want you.  Well, what do you think of yourself?"
+
+Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.
+
+"God made me as I am," she said; "wicked if you like--but not so wicked
+that I'll give myself again to a man I hate."
+
+The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to lay a
+caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.
+
+Soames could neither speak nor move.  That word 'hate'--so extreme, so
+primitive--made all the Forsyte in him tremble.  With a deep imprecation
+he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran almost into the arms
+of the lady sauntering back--the fool, the shadowing fool!
+
+He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the Bois.
+
+'Well,' he thought, 'I need have no consideration for her now; she has
+not a grain of it for me.  I'll show her this very day that she's my wife
+still.'
+
+But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion that he
+did not know what he meant.  One could not make scenes in public, and
+short of scenes in public what was there he could do? He almost cursed
+his own thin-skinnedness.  She might deserve no consideration; but
+he--alas! deserved some at his own hands.  And sitting lunchless in the
+hall of his hotel, with tourists passing every moment, Baedeker in hand,
+he was visited by black dejection. In irons!  His whole life, with every
+natural instinct and every decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all
+because Fate had driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon
+this woman--so utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set on any
+other! Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for seeing in her
+anything but the cruel Venus she was!  And yet, still seeing her with the
+sunlight on the clinging China crepe of her gown, he uttered a little
+groan, so that a tourist who was passing, thought: 'Man in pain!  Let's
+see! what did I have for lunch?'
+
+Later, in front of a cafe near the Opera, over a glass of cold tea with
+lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious resolution to go and dine
+at her hotel.  If she were there, he would speak to her; if she were not,
+he would leave a note.  He dressed carefully, and wrote as follows:
+
+"Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all events.
+If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone unturned to make
+things unbearable for him.  'S. F.'"
+
+He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the maiden
+name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word Forsyte on the
+envelope lest she should tear it up unread.  Then he went out, and made
+his way through the glowing streets, abandoned to evening
+pleasure-seekers.  Entering her hotel, he took his seat in a far corner
+of the dining-room whence he could see all entrances and exits.  She was
+not there.  He ate little, quickly, watchfully.  She did not come.  He
+lingered in the lounge over his coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy.
+But still she did not come. He went over to the keyboard and examined the
+names.  Number twelve, on the first floor!  And he determined to take the
+note up himself.  He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little salon;
+eight-ten-twelve!  Should he knock, push the note under, or....? He
+looked furtively round and turned the handle.  The door opened, but into
+a little space leading to another door; he knocked on that--no answer.
+The door was locked.  It fitted very closely to the floor; the note would
+not go under.  He thrust it back into his pocket, and stood a moment
+listening.  He felt somehow certain that she was not there.  And suddenly
+he came away, passing the little salon down the stairs.  He stopped at
+the bureau and said:
+
+"Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?"
+
+"Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur--suddenly, about three o'clock. There
+was illness in her family."
+
+Soames compressed his lips.  "Oh!" he said; "do you know her address?"
+
+"Non, Monsieur.  England, I think."
+
+Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out.  He hailed an open
+horse-cab which was passing.
+
+"Drive me anywhere!"
+
+The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved his whip.
+And Soames was borne along in that little yellow-wheeled Victoria all
+over star-shaped Paris, with here and there a pause, and the question,
+"C'est par ici, Monsieur?" "No, go on," till the man gave it up in
+despair, and the yellow-wheeled chariot continued to roll between the
+tall, flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-tree avenues--a little
+Flying Dutchman of a cab.
+
+'Like my life,' thought Soames, 'without object, on and on!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN THE WEB
+
+Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third morning
+received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and carried a brown
+billycock hat.  Soames motioned him to a seat.
+
+"The news from the war is not so bad, is it?" said Mr. Polteed.  "I hope
+I see you well, sir."
+
+"Thanks! quite."
+
+Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into it, and
+said softly:
+
+"I think we've done your business for you at last."
+
+"What?" ejaculated Soames.
+
+"Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be justified in
+calling conclusive evidence," and Mr. Polteed paused.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17 and a
+party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him coming out of
+her bedroom in the hotel about ten o'clock in the evening. With a little
+care in the giving of the evidence that will be enough, especially as 17
+has left Paris--no doubt with the party in question.  In fact, they both
+slipped off, and we haven't got on to them again, yet; but we shall--we
+shall.  She's worked hard under very difficult circumstances, and I'm
+glad she's brought it off at last."  Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette,
+tapped its end against the table, looked at Soames, and put it back.  The
+expression on his client's face was not encouraging.
+
+"Who is this new person?" said Soames abruptly.
+
+"That we don't know.  She'll swear to the fact, and she's got his
+appearance pat."
+
+Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:
+
+"'Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening dress at
+night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat cheeks, good chin,
+grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....'"
+
+Soames rose and went to the window.  He stood there in sardonic fury.
+Congenital idiot--spidery congenital idiot!  Seven months at fifteen
+pounds a week--to be tracked down as his own wife's lover! Guilty look!
+He threw the window open.
+
+"It's hot," he said, and came back to his seat.
+
+Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.
+
+"I doubt if that's quite good enough," he said, drawling the words, "with
+no name or address.  I think you may let that lady have a rest, and take
+up our friend 47 at this end."  Whether Polteed had spotted him he could
+not tell; but he had a mental vision of him in the midst of his cronies
+dissolved in inextinguishable laughter. 'Guilty look!'  Damnation!
+
+Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: "I assure you we
+have put it through sometimes on less than that.  It's Paris, you know.
+Attractive woman living alone.  Why not risk it, sir?  We might screw it
+up a peg."
+
+Soames had sudden insight.  The fellow's professional zeal was stirred:
+'Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce through a visit to
+his own wife's bedroom!  Something to talk of there, when I retire!'  And
+for one wild moment he thought: 'Why not?'  After all, hundreds of men of
+medium height had small feet and a guilty look!
+
+"I'm not authorised to take any risk!" he said shortly.
+
+Mr. Polteed looked up.
+
+"Pity," he said, "quite a pity!  That other affair seemed very costive."
+
+Soames rose.
+
+"Never mind that.  Please watch 47, and take care not to find a mare's
+nest.  Good-morning!"
+
+Mr. Polteed's eye glinted at the words 'mare's nest!'
+
+"Very good.  You shall be kept informed."
+
+And Soames was alone again.  The spidery, dirty, ridiculous business!
+Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on them.  Full ten
+minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk roused him with the draft
+prospectus of a new issue of shares, very desirable, in Manifold and
+Topping's.  That afternoon he left work early and made his way to the
+Restaurant Bretagne.  Only Madame Lamotte was in.  Would Monsieur have
+tea with her?
+
+Soames bowed.
+
+When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little room,
+he said abruptly:
+
+"I want a talk with you, Madame."
+
+The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long
+expected such words.
+
+"I have to ask you something first: That young doctor--what's his name?
+Is there anything between him and Annette?"
+
+Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet--clear-cut, black,
+hard, shining.
+
+"Annette is young," she said; "so is monsieur le docteur.  Between young
+people things move quickly; but Annette is a good daughter. Ah! what a
+jewel of a nature!"
+
+The least little smile twisted Soames' lips.
+
+"Nothing definite, then?"
+
+"But definite--no, indeed!  The young man is veree nice, but--what would
+you?  There is no money at present."
+
+She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same. Their eyes
+met.
+
+"I am a married man," he said, "living apart from my wife for many years.
+I am seeking to divorce her."
+
+Madame Lamotte put down her cup.  Indeed!  What tragic things there were!
+The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer species of
+contempt in Soames.
+
+"I am a rich man," he added, fully conscious that the remark was not in
+good taste.  "It is useless to say more at present, but I think you
+understand."
+
+Madame's eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked at him
+very straight.
+
+"Ah! ca--mais nous avons le temps!" was all she said.  "Another little
+cup?" Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked westward.
+
+He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit herself
+with that cheerful young ass until....!  But what chance of his ever
+being able to say: 'I'm free.'  What chance?  The future had lost all
+semblance of reality.  He felt like a fly, entangled in cobweb filaments,
+watching the desirable freedom of the air with pitiful eyes.
+
+He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens, and down
+Queen's Gate towards Chelsea.  Perhaps she had gone back to her flat.
+That at all events he could find out.  For since that last and most
+ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had taken refuge again in
+the feeling that she must have a lover.  He arrived before the little
+Mansions at the dinner-hour.  No need to enquire!  A grey-haired lady was
+watering the flower-boxes in her window.  It was evidently let.  And he
+walked slowly past again, along the river--an evening of clear, quiet
+beauty, all harmony and comfort, except within his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+RICHMOND PARK
+
+On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was received
+by Jolyon at Robin Hill:
+
+"Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again."
+
+It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure of
+June, whose berth was booked for the following day.  She was, indeed, in
+the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to her father's care
+when the message arrived.
+
+The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus of
+Jolly's enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation and
+regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails their individual
+liberties.  Enthusiastic at first about the 'wonderfulness' of the work,
+she had begun after a month to feel that she could train herself so much
+better than others could train her.  And if Holly had not insisted on
+following her example, and being trained too, she must inevitably have
+'cried off.'  The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April
+had further stiffened her failing resolve.  But now, on the point of
+departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two
+children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed on
+her so that she was still in danger of backing out.  The reading of that
+cablegram, with its disquieting reality, clinched the matter. She saw
+herself already nursing Jolly--for of course they would let her nurse her
+own brother!  Jolyon--ever wide and doubtful--had no such hope.  Poor
+June!
+
+Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal life was?
+Ever since he knew of his boy's arrival at Cape Town the thought of him
+had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon.  He could not get
+reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger all the time.  The
+cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a relief.  He was now safe
+from bullets, anyway.  And yet--this enteric was a virulent disease!  The
+Times was full of deaths therefrom.  Why could he not be lying out there
+in that up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home?  The un-Forsytean
+self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered
+Jolyon.  He would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his
+boy; but no such personal motive was influencing them.  He could only
+think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.
+
+Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree. She had
+grown up very much during these last months of hospital training away
+from home.  And, seeing her approach, he thought: 'She has more sense
+than June, child though she is; more wisdom. Thank God she isn't going
+out.'  She had seated herself in the swing, very silent and still.  'She
+feels this,' thought Jolyon, 'as much as I' and, seeing her eyes fixed on
+him, he said: "Don't take it to heart too much, my child.  If he weren't
+ill, he might be in much greater danger."
+
+Holly got out of the swing.
+
+"I want to tell you something, Dad.  It was through me that Jolly
+enlisted and went out."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love.  We used to
+ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged.  Jolly found it out, and thought
+he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.  It was all my fault,
+Dad; and I want to go out too.  Because if anything happens to either of
+them I should feel awful.  Besides, I'm just as much trained as June."
+
+Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony. So this
+was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself; and his three
+children were Forsytes after all.  Surely Holly might have told him all
+this before!  But he smothered the sarcastic sayings on his lips.
+Tenderness to the young was perhaps the most sacred article of his
+belief.  He had got, no doubt, what he deserved.  Engaged!  So this was
+why he had so lost touch with her! And to young Val Dartie--nephew of
+Soames--in the other camp!  It was all terribly distasteful.  He closed
+his easel, and set his drawing against the tree.
+
+"Have you told June?"
+
+"Yes; she says she'll get me into her cabin somehow.  It's a single
+cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor.  If you consent, she'll go
+up now and get permission."
+
+'Consent?' thought Jolyon.  'Rather late in the day to ask for that!'
+But again he checked himself.
+
+"You're too young, my dear; they won't let you."
+
+"June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town.  If they
+won't let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on training there.
+Let me go, Dad!"
+
+Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.
+
+"I never stop anyone from doing anything," he said.
+
+Holly flung her arms round his neck.
+
+"Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world."
+
+'That means the worst,' thought Jolyon.  If he had ever doubted his creed
+of tolerance he did so then.
+
+"I'm not friendly with Val's family," he said, "and I don't know Val, but
+Jolly didn't like him."
+
+Holly looked at the distance and said:
+
+"I love him."
+
+"That settles it," said Jolyon dryly, then catching the expression on her
+face, he kissed her, with the thought: 'Is anything more pathetic than
+the faith of the young?' Unless he actually forbade her going it was
+obvious that he must make the best of it, so he went up to town with
+June.  Whether due to her persistence, or the fact that the official they
+saw was an old school friend of Jolyon's, they obtained permission for
+Holly to share the single cabin.  He took them to Surbiton station the
+following evening, and they duly slid away from him, provided with money,
+invalid foods, and those letters of credit without which Forsytes do not
+travel.
+
+He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late dinner,
+served with an added care by servants trying to show him that they
+sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show them that he
+appreciated their sympathy.  But it was a real relief to get to his cigar
+on the terrace of flag-stones--cunningly chosen by young Bosinney for
+shape and colour--with night closing in around him, so beautiful a night,
+hardly whispering in the trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him
+ache.  The grass was drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones,
+up and down, till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of
+three, not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
+father was always nearest to the house, and his son always nearest to the
+terrace edge.  Each had an arm lightly within his arm; he dared not lift
+his hand to his cigar lest he should disturb them, and it burned away,
+dripping ash on him, till it dropped from his lips, at last, which were
+getting hot.  They left him then, and his arms felt chilly.  Three
+Jolyons in one Jolyon they had walked.
+
+He stood still, counting the sounds--a carriage passing on the highroad,
+a distant train, the dog at Gage's farm, the whispering trees, the groom
+playing on his penny whistle.  A multitude of stars up there--bright and
+silent, so far off!  No moon as yet! Just enough light to show him the
+dark flags and swords of the iris flowers along the terrace edge--his
+favourite flower that had the night's own colour on its curving crumpled
+petals.  He turned round to the house.  Big, unlighted, not a soul beside
+himself to live in all that part of it.  Stark loneliness!  He could not
+go on living here alone.  And yet, so long as there was beauty, why
+should a man feel lonely?  The answer--as to some idiot's riddle--was:
+Because he did.  The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for
+at the back of beauty was harmony, and at the back of harmony was
+--union.  Beauty could not comfort if the soul were out of it.  The
+night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of grapes on it in starshine, and
+the breath of grass and honey coming from it, he could not enjoy, while
+she who was to him the life of beauty, its embodiment and essence, was
+cut off from him, utterly cut off now, he felt, by honourable decency.
+
+He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that resignation
+which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their own way and left so
+comfortably off by their fathers.  But after dawn he dozed off, and soon
+was dreaming a strange dream.
+
+He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains--high as the very
+stars--stretching in a semi-circle from footlights to footlights.  He
+himself was very small, a little black restless figure roaming up and
+down; and the odd thing was that he was not altogether himself, but
+Soames as well, so that he was not only experiencing but watching.  This
+figure of himself and Soames was trying to find a way out through the
+curtains, which, heavy and dark, kept him in.  Several times he had
+crossed in front of them before he saw with delight a sudden narrow
+rift--a tall chink of beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse
+of Paradise, remote, ineffable.  Stepping quickly forward to pass into
+it, he found the curtains closing before him.  Bitterly disappointed he
+--or was it Soames?--moved on, and there was the chink again through the
+parted curtains, which again closed too soon.  This went on and on and he
+never got through till he woke with the word "Irene" on his lips.  The
+dream disturbed him badly, especially that identification of himself with
+Soames.
+
+Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours riding
+Jolly's horse in search of fatigue.  And on the second day he made up his
+mind to move to London and see if he could not get permission to follow
+his daughters to South Africa.  He had just begun to pack the following
+morning when he received this letter:
+
+"GREEN HOTEL,
+"June 13.
+"RICHMOND.
+"MY DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"You will be surprised to see how near I am to you.  Paris became
+impossible--and I have come here to be within reach of your advice. I
+would so love to see you again.  Since you left Paris I don't think I
+have met anyone I could really talk to.  Is all well with you and with
+your boy?  No one knows, I think, that I am here at present.
+
+"Always your friend,
+"IRENE."
+
+Irene within three miles of him!--and again in flight!  He stood with a
+very queer smile on his lips.  This was more than he had bargained for!
+
+About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he went along,
+he thought: 'Richmond Park!  By Jove, it suits us Forsytes!' Not that
+Forsytes lived there--nobody lived there save royalty, rangers, and the
+deer--but in Richmond Park Nature was allowed to go so far and no
+further, putting up a brave show of being natural, seeming to say: 'Look
+at my instincts--they are almost passions, very nearly out of hand, but
+not quite, of course; the very hub of possession is to possess oneself.'
+Yes! Richmond Park possessed itself, even on that bright day of June,
+with arrowy cuckoos shifting the tree-points of their calls, and the wood
+doves announcing high summer.
+
+The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o'clock, stood nearly
+opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was modest,
+highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry tart, and a
+dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost always standing
+before the door.
+
+In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion, Irene
+was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work, playing 'Hansel
+and Gretel' out of an old score.  Above her on a wall, not yet
+Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony, amongst deer-hounds,
+Scotch. caps, and slain stags; beside her in a pot on the window-sill was
+a white and rosy fuchsia.  The Victorianism of the room almost talked;
+and in her clinging frock Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from
+the shell of the past century.
+
+"If the proprietor had eyes," he said, "he would show you the door; you
+have broken through his decorations."  Thus lightly he smothered up an
+emotional moment.  Having eaten cold beef, pickled walnut, gooseberry
+tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they walked into the Park, and
+light talk was succeeded by the silence Jolyon had dreaded.
+
+"You haven't told me about Paris," he said at last.
+
+"No.  I've been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that. But then
+Soames came.  By the little Niobe--the same story; would I go back to
+him?"
+
+"Incredible!"
+
+She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now. Those
+dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: 'I have come to an
+end; if you want me, here I am.'
+
+For sheer emotional intensity had he ever--old as he was--passed through
+such a moment?
+
+The words: 'Irene, I adore you!' almost escaped him.  Then, with a
+clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision capable, he
+saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white wall.
+
+"My boy is very ill out there," he said quietly.
+
+Irene slipped her arm through his.
+
+"Let's walk on; I understand."
+
+No miserable explanation to attempt!  She had understood!  And they
+walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the rabbit-holes
+and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly.  He left her two hours later at the
+Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.
+
+'She knows of my feeling for her, then,' he thought.  Of course! One
+could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OVER THE RIVER
+
+Jolly was tired to death of dreams.  They had left him now too wan and
+weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly remembering far-off
+things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze through the window near his
+cot at the trickle of river running by in the sands, at the straggling
+milk-bush of the Karoo beyond.  He knew what the Karoo was now, even if
+he had not seen a Boer roll over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of
+flying bullets.  This pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled
+powder.  A thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit--who
+knew? Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil thing its
+victory--just enough to know that there were many lying here with him,
+that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch that thread
+of river and be able to remember faintly those far-away things....
+
+The sun was nearly down.  It would be cooler soon.  He would have liked
+to know the time--to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth, to hear the
+repeater strike.  It would have been friendly, home-like. He had not even
+strength to remember that the old watch was last wound the day he began
+to lie here.  The pulse of his brain beat so feebly that faces which came
+and went, nurse's, doctor's, orderly's, were indistinguishable, just one
+indifferent face; and the words spoken about him meant all the same
+thing, and that almost nothing.  Those things he used to do, though far
+and faint, were more distinct--walking past the foot of the old steps at
+Harrow 'bill'--'Here, sir!  Here, sir!'--wrapping boots in the
+Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining boots--grandfather coming
+from somewhere dark--a smell of earth--the mushroom house! Robin Hill!
+Burying poor old Balthasar in the leaves!  Dad! Home....
+
+Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no water in
+it--someone was speaking too.  Want anything?  No.  What could one want?
+Too weak to want--only to hear his watch strike....
+
+Holly!  She wouldn't bowl properly.  Oh!  Pitch them up!  Not sneaks!...
+'Back her, Two and Bow!'  He was Two!...  Consciousness came once more
+with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a rising blood-red crescent
+moon.  His eyes rested on it fascinated; in the long minutes of
+brain-nothingness it went moving up and up....
+
+"He's going, doctor!"  Not pack boots again?  Never?  'Mind your form,
+Two!'  Don't cry!  Go quietly--over the river--sleep!... Dark?  If
+somebody would--strike--his--watch!...
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOAMES ACTS
+
+A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained unopened in
+Soames' pocket throughout two hours of sustained attention to the affairs
+of the 'New Colliery Company,' which, declining almost from the moment of
+old Jolyon's retirement from the Chairmanship, had lately run down so
+fast that there was now nothing for it but a 'winding-up.'  He took the
+letter out to lunch at his City Club, sacred to him for the meals he had
+eaten there with his father in the early seventies, when James used to
+like him to come and see for himself the nature of his future life.
+
+Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed potato,
+he read:
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+"In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the matter up at
+the other end with gratifying results.  Observation of 47 has enabled us
+to locate 17 at the Green Hotel, Richmond.  The two have been observed to
+meet daily during the past week in Richmond Park. Nothing absolutely
+crucial has so far been notified.  But in conjunction with what we had
+from Paris at the beginning of the year, I am confident we could now
+satisfy the Court.  We shall, of course, continue to watch the matter
+until we hear from you.
+
+"Very faithfully yours,
+"CLAUD POLTEED."
+
+Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:
+
+"Take this away; it's cold."
+
+"Shall I bring you some more, sir?"
+
+"No.  Get me some coffee in the other room."
+
+And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two
+acquaintances without sign of recognition.
+
+'Satisfy the Court!' he thought, sitting at a little round marble table
+with the coffee before him.  That fellow Jolyon!  He poured out his
+coffee, sweetened and drank it.  He would disgrace him in the eyes of his
+own children!  And rising, with that resolution hot within him, he found
+for the first time the inconvenience of being his own solicitor.  He
+could not treat this scandalous matter in his own office.  He must commit
+the soul of his private dignity to a stranger, some other professional
+dealer in family dishonour. Who was there he could go to?  Linkman and
+Laver in Budge Row, perhaps--reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding
+acquaintances. But before he saw them he must see Polteed again.  But at
+this thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness.  To part with his
+secret?  How find the words?  How subject himself to contempt and secret
+laughter?  Yet, after all, the fellow knew already--oh yes, he knew!
+And, feeling that he must finish with it now, he took a cab into the West
+End.
+
+In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed's room was positively open,
+and the only precaution was a wire gauze, preventing the intrusion of
+flies.  Two or three had tried to come in, and been caught, so that they
+seemed to be clinging there with the intention of being devoured
+presently.  Mr. Polteed, following the direction of his client's eye,
+rose apologetically and closed the window.
+
+'Posing ass!'  thought Soames.  Like all who fundamentally believe in
+themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little sideway
+smile, he said: "I've had your letter.  I'm going to act. I suppose you
+know who the lady you've been watching really is?" Mr. Polteed's
+expression at that moment was a masterpiece.  It so clearly said: 'Well,
+what do you think?  But mere professional knowledge, I assure you--pray
+forgive it!'  He made a little half airy movement with his hand, as who
+should say: 'Such things--such things will happen to us all!'
+
+"Very well, then," said Soames, moistening his lips: "there's no need to
+say more.  I'm instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row to act for me.
+I don't want to hear your evidence, but kindly make your report to them
+at five o'clock, and continue to observe the utmost secrecy."
+
+Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once.  "My dear
+sir," he said.
+
+"Are you convinced," asked Soames with sudden energy, "that there is
+enough?"
+
+The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed's shoulders.
+
+"You can risk it," he murmured; "with what we have, and human nature, you
+can risk it."
+
+Soames rose.  "You will ask for Mr. Linkman.  Thanks; don't get up."  He
+could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him and the door.
+In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his forehead. This had been the
+worst of it--he could stand the strangers better. And he went back into
+the City to do what still lay before him.
+
+That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was overwhelmed
+by his old longing for a son--a son, to watch him eat as he went down the
+years, to be taken on his knee as James on a time had been wont to take
+him; a son of his own begetting, who could understand him because he was
+the same flesh and blood--understand, and comfort him, and become more
+rich and cultured than himself because he would start even better off.
+To get old--like that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there--and be
+quite alone with possessions heaping up around him; to take no interest
+in anything because it had no future and must pass away from him to hands
+and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot!  No!  He would force it
+through now, and  be free to marry, and have a son to care for him before
+he grew to be like the old old man his father, wistfully watching now his
+sweetbread, now his son.
+
+In that mood he went up to bed.  But, lying warm between those fine linen
+sheets of Emily's providing, he was visited by memories and torture.
+Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling of her body, beset him.  Why
+had he ever been fool enough to see her again, and let this flood back on
+him so that it was pain to think of her with that fellow--that stealing
+fellow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A SUMMER DAY
+
+His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon's mind in the days which followed
+the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park.  No further news had come;
+enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor could he expect to hear
+from June and Holly for three weeks at least.  In these days he felt how
+insufficient were his memories of Jolly, and what an amateur of a father
+he had been.  There was not a single memory in which anger played a part;
+not one reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one
+heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly's mother died. Nothing but
+half-ironical affection.  He had been too afraid of committing himself in
+any direction, for fear of losing his liberty, or interfering with that
+of his boy.
+
+Only in Irene's presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
+ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his son.
+With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and social creed of
+which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again during his boy's public
+school and varsity life--all that sense of not going back on what father
+and son expected of each other.  With Irene was bound up all his delight
+in beauty and in Nature.  And he seemed to know less and less which was
+the stronger within him. From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely
+awakened, however, one afternoon, just as he was starting off to
+Richmond, by a young man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who
+came forward faintly smiling.
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte?  Thank you!"  Placing an envelope in Jolyon's hand
+he wheeled off the path and rode away.  Bewildered, Jolyon opened it.
+
+"Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte!"
+
+A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant reaction
+'Why, here's the very thing you want, and you don't like it!'  But she
+must have had one too; and he must go to her at once. He turned things
+over as he went along.  It was an ironical business.  For, whatever the
+Scriptures said about the heart, it took more than mere longings to
+satisfy the law.  They could perfectly well defend this suit, or at least
+in good faith try to.  But the idea of doing so revolted Jolyon.  If not
+her lover in deed he was in desire, and he knew that she was ready to
+come to him.  Her face had told him so.  Not that he exaggerated her
+feeling for him.  She had had her grand passion, and he could not expect
+another from her at his age.  But she had trust in him, affection for
+him, and must feel that he would be a refuge.  Surely she would not ask
+him to defend the suit, knowing that he adored her!  Thank Heaven she had
+not that maddening British conscientiousness which refused happiness for
+the sake of refusing!  She must rejoice at this chance of being free
+after seventeen years of death in life!  As to publicity, the fat was in
+the fire!  To defend the suit would not take away the slur.  Jolyon had
+all the proper feeling of a Forsyte whose privacy is threatened: If he
+was to be  hung by the Law, by all means let it be for a sheep!  Moreover
+the notion of standing in a witness box and swearing to the truth that no
+gesture, not even a word of love had passed between them seemed to him
+more degrading than to take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer--more
+truly degrading, considering the feeling in his heart, and just as bad
+and painful for his children.  The thought of explaining away, if he
+could, before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their meetings in
+Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him. The brutality and
+hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process; the probability that
+they would not be believed--the mere vision of her, whom he looked on as
+the embodiment of Nature and of Beauty, standing there before all those
+suspicious, gloating eyes was hideous to him.  No, no!  To defend a suit
+only made a London holiday, and sold the newspapers.  A thousand times
+better accept what Soames and the gods had sent!
+
+'Besides,' he thought honestly, 'who knows whether, even for my boy's
+sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer? Anyway, her
+neck will be out of chancery at last!'  Thus absorbed, he was hardly
+conscious of the heavy heat.  The sky had become overcast, purplish with
+little streaks of white.  A heavy heat-drop plashed a little star pattern
+in the dust of the road as he entered the Park.  'Phew!'  he thought,
+'thunder!  I hope she's not come to meet me; there's a ducking up there!'
+But at that very minute he saw Irene coming towards the Gate.  'We must
+scuttle back to Robin Hill,' he thought.
+
+                 ***************************
+
+The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o'clock, bringing welcome
+distraction to the clerks in every office.  Soames was drinking a cup of
+tea when a note was brought in to him:
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+"Forsyte v.  Forsyte and Forsyte
+
+"In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you that we
+personally served the respondent and co-respondent in this suit to-day,
+at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.
+"Faithfully yours,
+"LINKMAN AND LAVER."
+
+For some minutes Soames stared at that note.  Ever since he had given
+those instructions he had been tempted to annul them.  It was so
+scandalous, such a general disgrace!  The evidence, too, what he had
+heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive; somehow, he believed
+less and less that those two had gone all lengths.  But this, of course,
+would drive them to it; and he suffered from the thought.  That fellow to
+have her love, where he had failed!  Was it too late?  Now that they had
+been brought up sharp by service of this petition, had he not a lever
+with which he could force them apart?  'But if I don't act at once,' he
+thought, 'it will be too late, now they've had this thing.  I'll go and
+see him; I'll go down!'
+
+And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the 'new-fangled'
+motor-cabs.  It might take a long time to run that fellow to ground, and
+Goodness knew what decision they might come to after such a shock!  'If I
+were a theatrical ass,' he thought, 'I suppose I should be taking a
+horse-whip or a pistol or something!'  He took instead a bundle of papers
+in the case of 'Magentie versus Wake,' intending to read them on the way
+down.  He did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and jarred,
+unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or the smell of
+petrol.  He must be guided by the fellow's attitude; the great thing was
+to keep his head!
+
+London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared Putney
+Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards.  What a lot of ants, all
+with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in the great scramble!
+Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames thought: 'I could let go if
+I liked!  Nothing could touch me; I could snap my fingers, live as I
+wished--enjoy myself!'  No!  One could not live as he had and just drop
+it all--settle down in Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had
+made.  A man's life was what he possessed and sought to possess.  Only
+fools thought otherwise--fools, and socialists, and libertines!
+
+The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace.  'Fifteen miles an
+hour, I should think!' he mused; 'this'll take people out of town to
+live!' and he thought of its bearing on the portions of London owned by
+his father--he himself had never taken to that form of investment, the
+gambler in him having all the outlet needed in his pictures.  And the cab
+sped on, down the hill past Wimbledon Common.  This interview!  Surely a
+man of fifty-two with grown-up children, and hung on the line, would not
+be reckless.  'He won't want to disgrace the family,' he thought; 'he was
+as fond of his father as I am of mine, and they were brothers.  That
+woman brings destruction--what is it in her?  I've never known.'  The cab
+branched off, along the side of a wood, and he heard a late cuckoo
+calling, almost the first he had heard that year.  He was now almost
+opposite the site he had originally chosen for his house, and which had
+been so unceremoniously rejected by Bosinney in favour of his own choice.
+He began passing his handkerchief over his face and hands, taking deep
+breaths to give him steadiness. 'Keep one's head,' he thought, 'keep
+one's head!'
+
+The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and the
+sound of music met him.  He had forgotten the fellow's daughters.
+
+"I may be out again directly," he said to the driver, "or I may be kept
+some time"; and he rang the bell.
+
+Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he felt
+relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by June or
+Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with complete surprise he
+saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting in an armchair listening.
+They both stood up.  Blood surged into Soames' brain, and all his
+resolution to be guided by this or that left him utterly.  The look of
+his farmer forbears--dogged Forsytes down by the sea, from 'Superior
+Dosset' back--grinned out of his face.
+
+"Very pretty!"  he said.
+
+He heard the fellow murmur:
+
+"This is hardly the place--we'll go to the study, if you don't mind."
+And they both passed him through the curtain opening.  In the little room
+to which he followed them, Irene stood by the open window, and the
+'fellow' close to her by a big chair.  Soames pulled the door to behind
+him with a slam; the sound carried him back all those years to the day
+when he had shut out Jolyon--shut him out for meddling with his affairs.
+
+"Well," he said, "what have you to say for yourselves?"
+
+The fellow had the effrontery to smile.
+
+"What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask.  I should
+imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."
+
+"Oh!" said Soames; "you think so!  I came to tell you that I'll divorce
+her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both, unless you swear to
+keep clear of each other from now on."
+
+He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering and his
+hands twitching.  Neither of them answered; but their faces seemed to him
+as if contemptuous.
+
+"Well," he said; "you--Irene?"
+
+Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.
+
+"Let her alone!" said Soames furiously.  "Irene, will you swear it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! and you?"
+
+"Still less."
+
+"So then you're guilty, are you?"
+
+"Yes, guilty."  It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with that
+unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried beyond
+himself, he cried:
+
+"You are a devil"
+
+"Go out!  Leave this house, or I'll do you an injury."
+
+That fellow to talk of injuries!  Did he know how near his throat was to
+being scragged?
+
+"A trustee," he said, "embezzling trust property!  A thief, stealing his
+cousin's wife."
+
+"Call me what you like.  You have chosen your part, we have chosen ours.
+Go out!"
+
+If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that moment.
+
+"I'll make you pay!" he said.
+
+"I shall be very happy."
+
+At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of him who
+had nicknamed him 'the man of property,' Soames stood glaring.  It was
+ridiculous!
+
+There they were, kept from violence by some secret force.  No blow
+possible, no words to meet the case.  But he could not, did not know how
+to turn and go away.  His eyes fastened on Irene's face--the last time
+he would ever see that fatal face--the last time, no doubt!
+
+"You," he said suddenly, "I hope you'll treat him as you treated
+me--that's all."
+
+He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not quite
+relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the hall, and got
+into his cab.  He lolled against the cushion with his eyes shut.  Never
+in his life had he been so near to murderous violence, never so thrown
+away the restraint which was his second nature.  He had a stripped and
+naked feeling, as if all virtue had gone out of him--life meaningless,
+mind-striking work.  Sunlight streamed in on him, but he felt cold.  The
+scene he had passed through had gone from him already, what was before
+him would not materialise, he could catch on to nothing; and he felt
+frightened, as if he had been hanging over the edge of a precipice, as if
+with another turn of the screw sanity would have failed him.  'I'm not
+fit for it,' he thought; 'I mustn't--I'm not fit for it.'  The cab sped
+on, and in mechanical procession trees, houses, people passed, but had no
+significance.  'I feel very queer,' he thought; 'I'll take a Turkish
+bath.--I've been very near to something.  It won't do.' The cab whirred
+its way back over the bridge, up the Fulham Road, along the Park.
+
+"To the Hammam," said Soames.
+
+Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so comforting!
+Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte coming out, red and
+glistening.
+
+"Hallo!" said George; "what are you training for?  You've not got much
+superfluous."
+
+Buffoon!  Soames passed him with his sideway smile.  Lying back, rubbing
+his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he thought: 'Let
+them laugh!  I won't feel anything!  I can't stand violence!  It's not
+good for me!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SUMMER NIGHT
+
+Soames left dead silence in the little study.  "Thank you for that good
+lie," said Jolyon suddenly.  "Come out--the air in here is not what it
+was!"
+
+In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained peach-trees
+the two walked up and down in silence.  Old Jolyon had planted some
+cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy terrace and the
+dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed daisies; for twelve years
+they had flourished, till their dark spiral shapes had quite a look of
+Italy.  Birds fluttered softly in the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped
+past, with a steel-blue sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass
+felt springy beneath the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased
+each other. After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was wonderfully
+poignant.  Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow strip of garden-bed
+full of mignonette and pansies, and from the bees came a low hum in which
+all other sounds were set--the mooing of a cow deprived of her calf, the
+calling of a cuckoo from an elm-tree at the bottom of the meadow.  Who
+would have thought that behind them, within ten miles, London began--that
+London of the Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise;
+its jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and
+stucco?  That London which had seen Irene's early tragedy, and Jolyon's
+own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse of the possessive
+instinct!
+
+And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll treat
+him as you treated me.'  That would depend on himself.  Could he trust
+himself?  Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he
+adored?  Could beauty be confided to him?  Or should she not be just a
+visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to
+return only at her own choosing?  'We are a breed of spoilers!' thought
+Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us.  Let
+her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not.
+Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never-never her cage!'
+
+She was the chink of beauty in his dream.  Was he to pass through the
+curtains now and reach her?  Was the rich stuff of many possessions, the
+close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct walling in that little
+black figure of himself, and Soames--was it to be rent so that he could
+pass through into his vision, find there something not of the senses
+only?  'Let me,' he thought, 'ah! let me only know how not to grasp and
+destroy!'
+
+But at dinner there were plans to be made.  To-night she would go back to
+the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.  He must instruct
+his solicitor--Jack Herring.  Not a finger must be raised to hinder the
+process of the Law.  Damages exemplary, judicial strictures, costs, what
+they liked--let it go through at the first moment, so that her neck might
+be out of chancery at last!  To-morrow he would see Herring--they would
+go and see him together.  And then--abroad, leaving no doubt, no
+difficulty about evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth.
+He looked round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than
+a woman was sitting there.  The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
+mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli, had
+known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women--this
+flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair, her lips,
+and in her eyes.
+
+'And this is to be mine!'  he thought.  'It frightens me!'
+
+After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee.  They sat
+there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer night come
+very slowly on.  It was still warm and the air smelled of lime
+blossom--early this summer.  Two bats were flighting with the faint
+mysterious little noise they make.  He had placed the chairs in front of
+the study window, and moths flew past to visit the discreet light in
+there.  There was no wind, and not a whisper in the old oak-tree twenty
+yards away!  The moon rose from behind the copse, nearly full; and the
+two lights struggled, till moonlight conquered, changing the colour and
+quality of all the garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their
+feet, climbing up, changing their faces.
+
+"Well," said Jolyon at last, "you'll be tired, dear; we'd better start.
+The maid will show you Holly's room," and he rang the study bell.  The
+maid who came handed him a telegram.  Watching her take Irene away, he
+thought: 'This must have come an hour or more ago, and she didn't bring
+it out to us!  That shows!  Well, we'll be hung for a sheep soon!'  And,
+opening the telegram, he read:
+
+"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on June
+20th.  Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.
+
+He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless.  The moon shone in on him; a
+moth flew in his face.  The first day of all that he had not thought
+almost ceaselessly of Jolly.  He went blindly towards the window, struck
+against the old armchair--his father's--and sank down on to the arm of
+it.  He sat there huddled' forward, staring into the night.  Gone out
+like a candle flame; far from home, from love, all by himself, in the
+dark!  His boy!  From a little chap always so good to him--so friendly!
+Twenty years old, and cut down like grass--to have no life at all!  'I
+didn't really know him,' he thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved
+each other.  It's only love that matters.'
+
+To die out there--lonely--wanting them--wanting home!  This seemed to his
+Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself. No shelter,
+no protection, no love at the last!  And all the deeply rooted clanship
+in him, the family feeling and essential clinging to his own flesh and
+blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon was so strong in all the
+Forsytes--felt outraged, cut, and torn by his boy's lonely passing.
+Better far if he had died in battle, without time to long for them to
+come to him, to call out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!
+
+The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with uncanny
+life, so that it seemed watching him--the oak-tree his boy had been so
+fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and hurt himself, and
+hadn't cried!
+
+The door creaked.  He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and read
+it.  He heard the faint rustle of her dress.  She sank on her knees close
+to him, and he forced himself to smile at her.  She stretched up her arms
+and drew his head down on her shoulder.  The perfume and warmth of her
+encircled him; her presence gained slowly his whole being.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JAMES IN WAITING
+
+Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his face
+toward Park Lane.  His father had been unwell lately.  This would have to
+be kept from him!  Never till that moment had he realised how much the
+dread of bringing James' grey hairs down with sorrow to the grave had
+counted with him; how intimately it was bound up with his own shrinking
+from scandal.  His affection for his father, always deep, had increased
+of late years with the knowledge that James looked on him as the real
+prop of his decline.  It seemed pitiful that one who had been so careful
+all his life and done so much for the family name--so that it was almost
+a byword for solid, wealthy respectability--should at his last gasp have
+to see it in all the newspapers.  This was like lending a hand to Death,
+that final enemy of Forsytes.  'I must tell mother,' he thought, 'and
+when it comes on, we must keep the papers from him somehow.  He sees
+hardly anyone.'  Letting himself in with his latchkey, he was beginning
+to ascend he stairs when he became conscious of commotion on the
+second-floor landing.  His mother's voice was saying:
+
+"Now, James, you'll catch cold.  Why can't you wait quietly?"
+
+His father's answering
+
+"Wait?  I'm always waiting.  Why doesn't he come in?"
+
+"You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy of
+yourself on the landing."
+
+"He'll go up to bed, I shouldn't wonder.  I shan't sleep."
+
+"Now come back to bed, James."
+
+"Um!  I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell."
+
+"You shan't have to wait till to-morrow morning; I'll go down and bring
+him up.  Don't fuss!"
+
+"There you go--always so cock-a-hoop.  He mayn't come in at all."
+
+"Well, if he doesn't come in you won't catch him by standing out here in
+your dressing-gown."
+
+Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father's tall
+figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over the balustrade
+above.  Light fell on his silvery hair and whiskers, investing his head
+with, a sort of halo.
+
+"Here he is!" he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured, and his
+mother's comfortable answer from the bedroom door:
+
+"That's all right.  Come in, and I'll brush your hair."  James extended a
+thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a skeleton, and passed
+through the doorway of his bedroom.
+
+'What is it?' thought Soames.  'What has he got hold of now?'
+
+His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the mirror,
+while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes through and through
+his hair.  She would do this several times a day, for it had on him
+something of the effect produced on a cat by scratching between its ears.
+
+"There you are!" he said.  "I've been waiting."
+
+Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
+examined the mark on it.
+
+"Well," he said, "you're looking better."
+
+James shook his head.
+
+"I want to say something.  Your mother hasn't heard."  He announced
+Emily's ignorance of what he hadn't told her, as if it were a grievance.
+
+"Your father's been in a great state all the evening.  I'm sure I don't
+know what about."
+
+The faint 'whisk-whisk' of the brushes continued the soothing of her
+voice.
+
+"No! you know nothing," said James.  "Soames can tell me."  And, fixing
+his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain, uncomfortable to
+watch, on his son, he muttered:
+
+"I'm getting on, Soames.  At my age I can't tell.  I might die any time.
+There'll be a lot of money.  There's Rachel and Cicely got no children;
+and Val's out there--that chap his father will get hold of all he can.
+And somebody'll pick up Imogen, I shouldn't wonder."
+
+Soames listened vaguely--he had heard all this before. Whish-whish! went
+the brushes.
+
+"If that's all!"  said Emily.
+
+"All!" cried James; "it's nothing.  I'm coming to that."  And again his
+eyes strained pitifully at Soames.
+
+"It's you, my boy," he said suddenly; "you ought to get a divorce."
+
+That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for Soames'
+composure.  His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on the buttonhook,
+and as if in apology James hurried on:
+
+"I don't know what's become of her--they say she's abroad.  Your Uncle
+Swithin used to admire her--he was a funny fellow."  (So he always
+alluded to his dead twin-'The Stout and the Lean of it,' they had been
+called.)  "She wouldn't be alone, I should say."  And with that
+summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he was silent,
+watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird's. Soames, too, was silent.
+Whish-whish went the brushes.
+
+"Come, James!  Soames knows best.  It's his 'business."
+
+"Ah!" said James, and the word came from deep down; "but there's all my
+money, and there's his--who's it to go to?  And when he dies the name
+goes out."
+
+Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
+dressing-table coverlet.
+
+"The name?" said Emily, "there are all the other Forsytes."
+
+"As if that helped me," muttered James.  "I shall be in my grave, and
+there'll be nobody, unless he marries again."
+
+"You're quite right," said Soames quietly; "I'm getting a divorce."
+
+James' eyes almost started from his head.
+
+"What?" he cried.  "There! nobody tells me anything."
+
+"Well," said Emily, "who would have imagined you wanted it?  My dear boy,
+that is a surprise, after all these years."
+
+"It'll be a scandal," muttered James, as if to himself; "but I can't help
+that.  Don't brush so hard.  When'll it come on?"
+
+"Before the Long Vacation; it's not defended."
+
+James' lips moved in secret calculation.  "I shan't live to see my
+grandson," he muttered.
+
+Emily ceased brushing.  "Of course you will, James.  Soames will be as
+quick as he can."
+
+There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.
+
+"Here! let's have the eau-de-Cologne," and, putting it to his nose, he
+moved his forehead in the direction of his son.  Soames bent over and
+kissed that brow just where the hair began.  A relaxing quiver passed
+over James' face, as though the wheels of anxiety within were running
+down.
+
+"I'll get to bed," he said; "I shan't want to see the papers when that
+comes.  They're a morbid lot; I can't pay attention to them, I'm too
+old."
+
+Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father say:
+
+"Here, I'm tired.  I'll say a prayer in bed."
+
+And his mother answering
+
+"That's right, James; it'll be ever so much more comfy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+OUT OF THE WEB
+
+On Forsyte 'Change the announcement of Jolly's death, among a batch of
+troopers, caused mixed sensation.  Strange to read that Jolyon Forsyte
+(fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of disease in the service
+of his country, and not be able to feel it personally.  It revived the
+old grudge against his father for having estranged himself.  For such was
+still the prestige of old Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never
+quite feel, as might have been expected, that it was they who had cut off
+his descendants for irregularity.  The news increased, of course, the
+interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val's name was Dartie, and even
+if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross, it would not be at
+all the same as if his name were Forsyte.  Not even casualty or glory to
+the Haymans would be really satisfactory. Family pride felt defrauded.
+
+How the rumour arose, then, that 'something very dreadful, my dear,' was
+pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell, secret as he kept
+everything.  Possibly some eye had seen 'Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte,'
+in the cause list; and had added it to 'Irene in Paris with a fair
+beard.'  Possibly some wall at Park Lane had ears.  The fact remained
+that it was known--whispered among the old, discussed among the
+young--that family pride must soon receive a blow.
+
+Soames, paying one, of his Sunday visits to Timothy's--paying it with the
+feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying no more--felt
+knowledge in the air as he came in.  Nobody, of course, dared speak of it
+before him, but each of the four other Forsytes present held their
+breath, aware that nothing could prevent Aunt Juley from making them all
+uncomfortable.  She looked so piteously at Soames, she checked herself on
+the point of speech so often, that Aunt Hester excused herself and said
+she must go and bathe Timothy's eye--he had a sty coming.  Soames,
+impassive, slightly supercilious, did not stay long.  He went out with a
+curse stifled behind his pale, just smiling lips.
+
+Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the coming
+scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his
+retirement--for he had come to that grim conclusion.  To go on seeing all
+those people who had known him as a 'long-headed chap,' an astute
+adviser--after that--no!  The fastidiousness and pride which was so
+strangely, so inextricably blended in him with possessive obtuseness,
+revolted against the thought.  He would retire, live privately, go on
+buying pictures, make a great name as a collector--after all, his heart
+was more in that than it had ever been in Law.  In pursuance of this now
+fixed resolve, he had to get ready to amalgamate his business with
+another firm without letting people know, for that would excite curiosity
+and make humiliation cast its shadow before.  He had pitched on the firm
+of Cuthcott, Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead.  The full name
+after the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott, Holliday, Kingson,
+Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.  But after debate as to which of the dead
+still had any influence with the living, it was decided to reduce the
+title to Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte, of whom Kingson would be the
+active and Soames the sleeping partner.  For leaving his name, prestige,
+and clients behind him, Soames would receive considerable value.
+
+One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a stage of
+his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth, and after writing
+off liberally for depreciation by the war, found his value to be some
+hundred and thirty thousand pounds.  At his father's death, which could
+not, alas, be delayed much longer, he must come into at least another
+fifty thousand, and his yearly expenditure at present just reached two.
+Standing among his pictures, he saw before him a future full of bargains
+earned by the trained faculty of knowing better than other people.
+Selling what was about to decline, keeping what was still going up, and
+exercising judicious insight into future taste, he would make a unique
+collection, which at his death would pass to the nation under the title
+'Forsyte Bequest.'
+
+If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with Madame
+Lamotte.  She had, he knew, but one real ambition--to live on her
+'renter' in Paris near her grandchildren.  He would buy the goodwill of
+the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price.  Madame would live like a
+Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested as she would know how.
+(Incidentally Soames meant to put a capable manager in her place, and
+make the restaurant pay good interest on his money.  There were great
+possibilities in Soho.)  On Annette he would promise to settle fifteen
+thousand pounds (whether designedly or not), precisely the sum old Jolyon
+had settled on 'that woman.'
+
+A letter from Jolyon's solicitor to his own had disclosed the fact that
+'those two' were in Italy.  And an opportunity had been duly given for
+noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in London. The matter was
+clear as daylight, and would be disposed of in half an hour or so; but
+during that half-hour he, Soames, would go down to hell; and after that
+half-hour all bearers of the Forsyte name would feel the bloom was off
+the rose.  He had no illusions like Shakespeare that roses by any other
+name would smell as sweet.  The name was a possession, a concrete,
+unstained piece of property, the value of which would be reduced some
+twenty per cent. at least. Unless it were Roger, who had once refused to
+stand for Parliament, and--oh, irony!--Jolyon, hung on the line, there
+had never been a distinguished Forsyte.  But that very lack of
+distinction was the name's greatest asset.  It was a private name,
+intensely individual, and his own property; it had never been exploited
+for good or evil by intrusive report.  He and each member of his family
+owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference from the
+public than had been necessitated by their births, their marriages, their
+deaths.  And during these weeks of waiting and preparing to drop the Law,
+he conceived for that Law a bitter distaste, so deeply did he resent its
+coming violation of his name, forced on him by the need he felt to
+perpetuate that name in a lawful manner.  The monstrous injustice of the
+whole thing excited in him a perpetual suppressed fury.  He had asked no
+better than to live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go into the
+witness box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim his
+failure to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of
+his kind.  It was all upside down.  She and that fellow ought to be the
+sufferers, and they--were in Italy!  In these weeks the Law he had served
+so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of all property,
+seemed to him quite pitiful.  What could be more insane than to tell a
+man that he owned his wife, and punish him when someone unlawfully took
+her away from him?  Did the Law not know that a man's name was to him the
+apple of his eye, that it was far harder to be regarded as cuckold than
+as seducer?  He actually envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where
+he, Soames, had failed.  The question of damages worried him, too.  He
+wanted to make that fellow suffer, but he remembered his cousin's words,
+"I shall be very happy," with the uneasy feeling that to claim damages
+would make not Jolyon but himself suffer; he felt uncannily that Jolyon
+would rather like to pay them--the chap was so loose. Besides, to claim
+damages was not the thing to do.  The claim, indeed, had been made almost
+mechanically; and as the hour drew near Soames saw in it just another
+dodge of this insensitive and topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so
+that people might sneer and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for
+her!"  And he gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the
+money would be given to a Home for Fallen Women.  He was a long time
+hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched on it, he used
+to wake up in the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid; it'll draw
+attention.  Something quieter--better taste.'  He did not care for dogs,
+or he would have named them; and it was in desperation at last--for his
+knowledge of charities was limited--that he decided on the blind.  That
+could not be inappropriate, and it would make the Jury assess the damages
+high.
+
+A good many suits were dropping out of the list, which happened to be
+exceptionally thin that summer, so that his case would be reached before
+August.  As the day grew nearer, Winifred was his only comfort.  She
+showed the fellow-feeling of one who had been through the mill, and was
+the 'femme-sole' in whom he confided, well knowing that she would not let
+Dartie into her confidence. That ruffian would be only too rejoiced!  At
+the end of July, on the afternoon before the case, he went in to see her.
+They had not yet been able to leave town, because Dartie had already
+spent their summer holiday, and Winifred dared not go to her father for
+more money while he was waiting not to be told anything about this affair
+of Soames.
+
+Soames found her with a letter in her hand.
+
+"That from Val," he asked gloomily.  "What does he say?"
+
+"He says he's married," said Winifred.
+
+"Whom to, for Goodness' sake?"
+
+Winifred looked up at him.
+
+"To Holly Forsyte, Jolyon's daughter."
+
+"What?"
+
+"He got leave and did it.  I didn't even know he knew her. Awkward, isn't
+it?"
+
+Soames uttered a short laugh at that characteristic minimisation.
+
+"Awkward!  Well, I don't suppose they'll hear about this till they come
+back.  They'd better stay out there.  That fellow will give her money."
+
+"But I want Val back," said Winifred almost piteously; "I miss him, he
+helps me to get on."
+
+"I know," murmured Soames.  "How's Dartie behaving now?"
+
+"It might be worse; but it's always money.  Would you like me to come
+down to the Court to-morrow, Soames?"
+
+Soames stretched out his hand for hers.  The gesture so betrayed the
+loneliness in him that she pressed it between her two.
+
+"Never mind, old boy.  You'll feel ever so much better when it's all
+over."
+
+"I don't know what I've done," said Soames huskily; "I never have. It's
+all upside down.  I was fond of her; I've always been."
+
+Winifred saw a drop of blood ooze out of his lip, and the sight stirred
+her profoundly.
+
+"Of course," she said, "it's been too bad of her all along!  But what
+shall I do about this marriage of Val's, Soames?  I don't know how to
+write to him, with this coming on.  You've seen that child. Is she
+pretty?"
+
+"Yes, she's pretty," said Soames.  "Dark--lady-like enough."
+
+'That doesn't sound so bad,' thought Winifred.  'Jolyon had style.'
+
+"It is a coil," she said.  "What will father say?
+
+"Mustn't be told," said Soames.  "The war'll soon be over now, you'd
+better let Val take to farming out there."
+
+It was tantamount to saying that his nephew was lost.
+
+"I haven't told Monty," Winifred murmured desolately.
+
+The case was reached before noon next day, and was over in little more
+than half an hour.  Soames--pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the
+witness-box--had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all like one
+dead.  The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he left the Courts of
+Justice.
+
+Four hours until he became public property!  'Solicitor's divorce suit!'
+A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within him.  'Damn them
+all!' he thought; 'I won't run away.  I'll act as if nothing had
+happened.'  And in the sweltering heat of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill
+he walked all the way to his City Club, lunched, and went back to his
+office.  He worked there stolidly throughout the afternoon.
+
+On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their
+involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were immediately
+withdrawn.  In front of St. Paul's, he stopped to buy the most
+gentlemanly of the evening papers.  Yes! there he was! 'Well-known
+solicitor's divorce.  Cousin co-respondent.  Damages given to the
+blind'--so, they had got that in!  At every other face, he thought: 'I
+wonder if you know!'  And suddenly he felt queer, as if something were
+racing round in his head.
+
+What was this?  He was letting it get hold of him!  He mustn't!  He would
+be ill.  He mustn't think!  He would get down to the river and row about,
+and fish.  'I'm not going to be laid up,' he thought.
+
+It flashed across him that he had something of importance to do before he
+went out of town.  Madame Lamotte!  He must explain the Law.  Another six
+months before he was really free!  Only he did not want to see Annette!
+And he passed his hand over the top of his head--it was very hot.
+
+He branched off through Covent Garden.  On this sultry day of late July
+the garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and Soho seemed
+more than ever the disenchanted home of rapscallionism. Alone, the
+Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily painted, with its blue tubs and the
+dwarf trees therein, retained an aloof and Frenchified self-respect.  It
+was the slack hour, and pale trim waitresses were preparing the little
+tables for dinner.  Soames went through into the private part.  To his
+discomfiture Annette answered his knock.  She, too, looked pale and
+dragged down by the heat.
+
+"You are quite a stranger," she said languidly.
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"I haven't wished to be; I've been busy."
+
+"Where's your mother, Annette?  I've got some news for her."
+
+"Mother is not in."
+
+It seemed to Soames that she looked at him in a queer way.  What did she
+know?  How much had her mother told her?  The worry of trying to make
+that out gave him an alarming feeling in the head. He gripped the edge of
+the table, and dizzily saw Annette come forward, her eyes clear with
+surprise.  He shut his own and said:
+
+"It's all right.  I've had a touch of the sun, I think."  The sun! What
+he had was a touch of 'darkness!  Annette's voice, French and composed,
+said:
+
+"Sit down, it will pass, then."  Her hand pressed his shoulder, and
+Soames sank into a chair.  When the dark feeling dispersed, and he opened
+his eyes, she was looking down at him.  What an inscrutable and odd
+expression for a girl of twenty!
+
+"Do you feel better?"
+
+"It's nothing," said Soames.  Instinct told him that to be feeble before
+her was not helping him--age was enough handicap without that.
+Will-power was his fortune with Annette, he had lost ground these latter
+months from indecision--he could not afford to lose any more.  He got up,
+and said:
+
+"I'll write to your mother.  I'm going down to my river house for a long
+holiday.  I want you both to come there presently and stay. It's just at
+its best.  You will, won't you?"
+
+"It will be veree nice."  A pretty little roll of that 'r' but no
+enthusiasm.  And rather sadly he added:
+
+"You're feeling the heat; too, aren't you, Annette?  It'll do you good to
+be on the river.  Good-night."  Annette swayed forward. There was a sort
+of compunction in the movement.
+
+"Are you fit to go?  Shall I give you some coffee?"
+
+"No," said Soames firmly.  "Give me your hand."
+
+She held out her hand, and Soames raised it to his lips.  When he looked
+up, her face wore again that strange expression.  'I can't tell,' he
+thought, as he went out; 'but I mustn't think--I mustn't worry:
+
+But worry he did, walking toward Pall Mall.  English, not of her
+religion, middle-aged, scarred as it were by domestic tragedy, what had
+he to give her?  Only wealth, social position, leisure, admiration!  It
+was much, but was it enough for a beautiful girl of twenty?  He felt so
+ignorant about Annette.  He had, too, a curious fear of the French nature
+of her mother and herself.  They knew so well what they wanted.  They
+were almost Forsytes.  They would never grasp a shadow and miss a
+substance.
+
+The tremendous effort it was to write a simple note to Madame Lamotte
+when he reached his Club warned him still further that he was at the end
+of his tether.
+
+"MY DEAR MADAME (he said),
+
+"You will see by the enclosed newspaper cutting that I obtained my decree
+of divorce to-day.  By the English Law I shall not, however, be free to
+marry again till the decree is confirmed six months hence.  In the
+meanwhile I have the honor to ask to be considered a formal suitor for
+the hand of your daughter.  I shall write again in a few days and beg you
+both to come and stay at my river house.
+"I am, dear Madame,
+"Sincerely yours,
+"SOAMES FORSYTE."
+
+Having sealed and posted this letter, he went into the dining-room. Three
+mouthfuls of soup convinced him that he could not eat; and, causing a cab
+to be summoned, he drove to Paddington Station and took the first train
+to Reading.  He reached his house just as the sun went down, and wandered
+out on to the lawn.  The air was drenched with the scent of pinks and
+picotees in his flower-borders.  A stealing coolness came off the river.
+
+Rest-peace!  Let a poor fellow rest!  Let not worry and shame and anger
+chase like evil night-birds in his head!  Like those doves perched
+half-sleeping on their dovecot, like the furry creatures in the woods on
+the far side, and the simple folk in their cottages, like the trees and
+the river itself, whitening fast in twilight, like the darkening
+cornflower-blue sky where stars were coming up--let him cease from
+himself, and rest!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+PASSING OF AN AGE
+
+The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the last day
+of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily was told until it
+was accomplished.
+
+The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet hotels in
+London where greater expense can be incurred for less result than
+anywhere else under heaven.  Her beauty in the best Parisian frocks was
+giving him more satisfaction than if he had collected a perfect bit of
+china, or a jewel of a picture; he looked forward to the moment when he
+would exhibit her in Park Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy's.
+
+If some one had asked him in those days, "In confidence--are you in love
+with this girl?" he would have replied: "In love?  What is love?  If you
+mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in those old days when I
+first met her and she would not have me; when I sighed and starved after
+her and couldn't rest a minute until she yielded--no!  If you mean do I
+admire her youth and prettiness, do my senses ache a little when I see
+her moving about--yes!  Do I think she will keep me straight, make me a
+creditable wife and a good mother for my children?--again, yes!"
+
+"What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the women who
+are married get from the men who marry them?" And if the enquirer had
+pursued his query, "And do you think it was fair to have tempted this
+girl to give herself to you for life unless you have really touched her
+heart?" he would have answered: "The French see these things differently
+from us.  They look at marriage from the point of view of establishments
+and children; and, from my own experience, I am not at all sure that
+theirs is not the sensible view.  I shall not expect this time more than
+I can get, or she can give.  Years hence I shouldn't be surprised if I
+have trouble with her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have children
+by then.  I shall shut my eyes.  I have had my great passion; hers is
+perhaps to come--I don't suppose it will be for me.  I offer her a great
+deal, and I don't expect much in return, except children, or at least a
+son.  But one thing I am sure of--she has very good sense!"
+
+And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, "You do not look, then, for
+spiritual union in this marriage?" Soames would have lifted his sideway
+smile, and rejoined: "That's as it may be.  If I get satisfaction for my
+senses, perpetuation of myself; good taste and good humour in the house;
+it is all I can expect at my age.  I am not likely to be going out of my
+way towards any far-fetched sentimentalism."  Whereon, the enquirer must
+in good taste have ceased enquiry.
+
+The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth grey with
+unshed tears.  Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette beside him in dark
+furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning of the funeral procession,
+to the rails in Hyde Park.  Little moved though he ever was by public
+matters, this event, supremely symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich
+period, impressed his fancy.  In '37, when she came to the throne,
+'Superior Dosset' was still building houses to make London hideous; and
+James, a stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his
+practice in the Law.  Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved their
+upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; 'tigers' swung behind cabriolets;
+women said, 'La!' and owned no property; there were manners in the land,
+and pigsties for the poor; unhappy devils were hanged for little crimes,
+and Dickens had but just begun to write. Well-nigh two generations had
+slipped by--of steamboats, railways, telegraphs, bicycles, electric
+light, telephones, and now these motorcars--of such accumulated wealth,
+that eight per cent. had become three, and Forsytes were numbered by the
+thousand!  Morals had changed, manners had changed, men had become
+monkeys twice-removed, God had become Mammon--Mammon so respectable as to
+deceive himself: Sixty-four years that favoured property, and had made
+the upper middle class; buttressed, chiselled, polished it, till it was
+almost indistinguishable in manners, morals, speech, appearance, habit,
+and soul from the nobility.  An epoch which had gilded individual liberty
+so that if a man had money, he was free in law and fact, and if he had
+not money he was free in law and not in fact.  An era which had canonised
+hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be.  A great Age,
+whose transmuting influence nothing had escaped save the nature of man
+and the nature of the Universe.
+
+And to witness the passing of this Age, London--its pet and fancy--was
+pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde Park, hub of
+Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.  Under the grey heavens,
+whose drizzle just kept off, the dark concourse gathered to see the show.
+The 'good old'  Queen, full of years and virtue, had emerged from her
+seclusion for the last time to make a London holiday.  From Houndsditch,
+Acton, Ealing, Hampstead, Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney,
+Hornsey, Leytonstone, Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green
+pastures where Forsytes flourish--Mayfair and Kensington, St. James' and
+Belgravia, Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent's Park, the people
+swarmed down on to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky
+pomp and pageantry.  Never again would a Queen reign so long, or people
+have a chance to see so much history buried for their money. A pity the
+war dragged on, and that the Wreath of Victory could not be laid upon her
+coffin!  All else would be there to follow and commemorate--soldiers,
+sailors, foreign princes, half-masted bunting, tolling bells, and above
+all the surging, great, dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple sadness
+here and there deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation.
+After all, more than a Queen was going to her rest, a woman who had
+braved sorrow, lived well and wisely according to her lights.
+
+Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in Annette's,
+Soames waited.  Yes! the Age was passing!  What with this Trade Unionism,
+and Labour fellows in the House of Commons, with continental fiction, and
+something in the general feel of everything, not to be expressed in
+words, things were very different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking
+night, and George Forsyte saying: "They're all socialists, they want our
+goods." Like James, Soames didn't know, he couldn't tell--with Edward on
+the throne!  Things would never be as safe again as under good old Viccy!
+Convulsively he pressed his young wife's arm.  There, at any rate, was
+something substantially his own, domestically certain again at last;
+something which made property worth while--a real thing once more.
+Pressed close against her and trying to ward others off, Soames was
+content.  The crowd swayed round them, ate sandwiches and dropped crumbs;
+boys who had climbed the plane-trees chattered above like monkeys, threw
+twigs and orange-peel.  It was past time; they should be coming soon!
+And, suddenly, a little behind them to the left, he saw a tallish man
+with a soft hat and short grizzling beard, and a tallish woman in a
+little round fur cap and veil.  Jolyon and Irene talking, smiling at each
+other, close together like Annette and himself!  They had not seen him;
+and stealthily, with a very queer feeling in his heart, Soames watched
+those two.  They looked happy!  What had they come here for--inherently
+illicit creatures, rebels from the Victorian ideal? What business had
+they in this crowd?  Each of them twice exiled by morality--making a
+boast, as it were, of love and laxity!  He watched them fascinated;
+admitting grudgingly even with his arm thrust through Annette's
+that--that she--Irene--No! he would not admit it; and he turned his eyes
+away.  He would not see them, and let the old bitterness, the old longing
+rise up within him!  And then Annette turned to him and said: "Those two
+people, Soames; they know you, I am sure.  Who are they?"
+
+Soames nosed sideways.
+
+"What people?"
+
+"There, you see them; just turning away.  They know you."
+
+"No," Soames answered; "a mistake, my dear."
+
+"A lovely face!  And how she walk!  Elle est tres distinguee!"
+
+Soames looked then.  Into his life, out of his life she had walked like
+that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the contact of
+his soul!  He turned abruptly from that receding vision of the past.
+
+"You'd better attend," he said, "they're coming now!"
+
+But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the head of the
+procession, he was quivering with the sense of always missing something,
+with instinctive regret that he had not got them both.
+
+Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long line wound
+in through the Park gate.  He heard Annette whisper, "How sad it is and
+beautiful!" felt the clutch of her hand as she stood up on tiptoe; and
+the crowd's emotion gripped him.  There it was--the bier of the Queen,
+coffin of the Age slow passing!  And as it went by there came a murmuring
+groan from all the long line of those who watched, a sound such as Soames
+had never heard, so unconscious, primitive, deep and wild, that neither
+he nor any knew whether they had joined in uttering it.  Strange sound,
+indeed!  Tribute of an Age to its own death....  Ah!  Ah!....  The hold
+on life had slipped.  That which had seemed eternal was gone!  The
+Queen--God bless her!
+
+It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves on over
+grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside down the dense
+crowds mile after mile.  It was a human sound, and yet inhuman, pushed
+out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate knowledge of universal death
+and change.  None of us--none of us can hold on for ever!
+
+It left silence for a little--a very little time, till tongues began,
+eager to retrieve interest in the show.  Soames lingered just long enough
+to gratify Annette, then took her out of the Park to lunch at his
+father's in Park Lane....
+
+James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window.  The last
+show he would see, last of so many!  So she was gone!  Well, she was
+getting an old woman.  Swithin and he had seen her crowned--slim slip of
+a girl, not so old as Imogen!  She had got very stout of late.  Jolyon
+and he had seen her married to that German chap, her husband--he had
+turned out all right before he died, and left her with that son of his.
+And he remembered the many evenings he and his brothers and their cronies
+had wagged their heads over their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his
+salad days.  And now he had come to the throne.  They said he had
+steadied down--he didn't know--couldn't tell!  He'd make the money fly
+still, he shouldn't wonder.  What a lot of people out there!  It didn't
+seem so very long since he and Swithin stood in the crowd outside
+Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin had taken him to
+Cremorne afterwards--racketty chap, Swithin; no, it didn't seem much
+longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had joined with Roger in renting a
+balcony in Piccadilly.
+
+Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in August! And
+there was Soames married again to a French girl.  The French were a queer
+lot, but they made good mothers, he had heard.  Things changed!  They
+said this German Emperor was here for the funeral, his telegram to old
+Kruger had been in shocking taste.  He should not be surprised if that
+chap made trouble some day.  Change!  H'm! Well, they must look after
+themselves when he was gone: he didn't know where he'd be!  And now Emily
+had asked Dartie to lunch, with Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames'
+wife--she was always doing something.  And there was Irene living with
+that fellow Jolyon, they said.  He'd marry her now, he supposed.
+
+'My brother Jolyon,' he thought, 'what would he have said to it all?' And
+somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his elder brother, once
+so looked up to, would have said, so worried James that he got up from
+his chair by the window, and began slowly, feebly to pace the room.
+
+'She was a pretty thing, too,' he thought; 'I was fond of her. Perhaps
+Soames didn't suit her--I don't know--I can't tell.  We never had any
+trouble with our wives.'  Women had changed everything had changed!  And
+now the Queen was dead--well, there it was!  A movement in the crowd
+brought him to a standstill at the window, his nose touching the pane and
+whitening from the chill of it.  They had got her as far as Hyde Park
+Corner--they were passing now!  Why didn't Emily come up here where she
+could see, instead of fussing about lunch.  He missed her at that
+moment--missed her! Through the bare branches of the plane-trees he could
+just see the procession, could see the hats coming off the people's
+heads--a lot of them would catch colds, he shouldn't wonder!  A voice
+behind him said:
+
+"You've got a capital view here, James!"
+
+"There you are!" muttered James; "why didn't you come before?  You might
+have missed it!"
+
+And he was silent, staring with all his might.
+
+"What's the noise?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"There's no noise," returned Emily; "what are you thinking of?--they
+wouldn't cheer."
+
+"I can hear it."
+
+"Nonsense, James!"
+
+No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was the
+groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.
+
+"Don't you ever tell me where I'm buried," he said suddenly.  "I shan't
+want to know."  And he turned from the window.  There she went, the old
+Queen; she'd had a lot of anxiety--she'd be glad to be out of it, he
+should think!
+
+Emily took up the hair-brushes.
+
+"There'll be just time to brush your head," she said, "before they come.
+You must look your best, James."
+
+"Ah!" muttered James; "they say she's pretty."
+
+The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the dining-room.
+James was seated by the fire when she was brought in. He placed, his
+hands on the arms of the chair and slowly raised himself.  Stooping and
+immaculate in his frock-coat, thin as a line in Euclid, he received
+Annette's hand in his; and the anxious eyes of his furrowed face, which
+had lost its colour now, doubted above her.  A little warmth came into
+them and into his cheeks, refracted from her bloom.
+
+"How are you?" he said.  "You've been to see the Queen, I suppose? Did
+you have a good crossing?"
+
+In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of his name.
+
+Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette murmured
+something in French which James did not understand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, "you want your lunch, I expect.  Soames, ring the
+bell; we won't wait for that chap Dartie."  But just then they arrived.
+Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see 'the old girl.'  With an
+early cocktail beside him, he had taken a 'squint' from the smoking-room
+of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen had been obliged to come back
+from the Park to fetch him thence. His brown eyes rested on Annette with
+a stare of almost startled satisfaction.  The second beauty that fellow
+Soames had picked up! What women could see in him!  Well, she would play
+him the same trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a
+lucky devil!  And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of
+Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his assurance.
+Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred's composure, Imogen's
+enquiring friendliness, Dartie's showing-off, and James' solicitude about
+her food, it was not, Soames felt, a successful lunch for his bride.  He
+took her away very soon.
+
+"That Monsieur Dartie," said Annette in the cab, "je n'aime pas ce
+type-la!"
+
+"No, by George!" said Soames.
+
+"Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty.  Your father is
+veree old.  I think your mother has trouble with him; I should not like
+to be her."
+
+Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his young
+wife; but it disquieted him a little.  The thought may have just flashed
+through him, too: 'When I'm eighty she'll be fifty-five, having trouble
+with me!'
+
+"There's just one other house of my relations I must take you to," he
+said; "you'll find it funny, but we must get it over; and then we'll dine
+and go to the theatre."
+
+In this way he prepared her for Timothy's.  But Timothy's was different.
+They were delighted to see dear Soames after this long long time; and so
+this was Annette!
+
+"You are so pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for dear Soames,
+aren't you?  But he's very attentive and careful--such a good hush...."
+Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips just under each of
+Annette's eyes--she afterwards described them to Francie, who dropped in,
+as: "Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I quite wanted to kiss them.  I must say
+dear Soames is a perfect connoisseur.  In her French way, and not so very
+French either, I think she's as pretty--though not so distinguished, not
+so alluring--as Irene.  Because she was alluring, wasn't she? with that
+white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, couleur de--what was it?
+I always forget."
+
+"Feuille morte," Francie prompted.
+
+"Of course, dead leaves--so strange.  I remember when I was a girl,
+before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy--to 'walk' it was
+called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest, and
+beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady."
+
+"Yes, auntie," said Francie, "but I don't see the connection."
+
+"Oh!" replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, "it was so alluring, and her
+eyes and hair, you know...."  She was silent, as if surprised in some
+indelicacy.  "Feuille morte," she added suddenly; "Hester--do remember
+that!"....
+
+Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether Timothy
+should or should not be summoned to see Annette.
+
+"Oh, don't bother!" said Soames.
+
+"But it's no trouble, only of course Annette's being French might upset
+him a little.  He was so scared about Fashoda.  I think perhaps we had
+better not run the risk, Hester.  It's nice to have her all to ourselves,
+isn't it?  And how are you, Soames?  Have you quite got over your...."
+
+Hester interposed hurriedly:
+
+"What do you think of London, Annette?"
+
+Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply.  It came, sensible, composed: "Oh!
+I know London.  I have visited before."
+
+He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the restaurant.
+The French had different notions about gentility, and to shrink from
+connection with it might seem to her ridiculous; he had waited to be
+married before mentioning it; and now he wished he hadn't.
+
+"And what part do you know best?" said Aunt Juley.
+
+"Soho," said Annette simply.
+
+Soames snapped his jaw.
+
+"Soho?" repeated Aunt Juley; "Soho?"
+
+'That'll go round the family,' thought Soames.
+
+"It's very French, and interesting," he said.
+
+"Yes," murmured Aunt Juley, "your Uncle Roger had some houses there once;
+he was always having to turn the tenants out, I remember."
+
+Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.
+
+"Of course," said Aunt Juley, "you will be going down there soon to
+settle in.  We are all so looking forward to the time when Annette has a
+dear little...."
+
+"Juley!" cried Aunt Hester desperately, "ring tea!"
+
+Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.
+
+"I shouldn't mention Soho if I were you," he said in the cab. "It's
+rather a shady part of London; and you're altogether above that
+restaurant business now; I mean," he added, "I want you to know nice
+people, and the English are fearful snobs."
+
+Annette's clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.
+
+"Yes?" she said.
+
+'H'm!' thought Soames, 'that's meant for me!' and he looked at her hard.
+'She's got good business instincts,' he thought.  'I must make her grasp
+it once for all!'
+
+"Look here, Annette! it's very simple, only it wants understanding.  Our
+professional and leisured classes still think themselves a cut above our
+business classes, except of course the very rich.  It may be stupid, but
+there it is, you see.  It isn't advisable in England to let people know
+that you ran a restaurant or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade.
+It may have been extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on
+you; you don't have such a good time, or meet such nice people--that's
+all."
+
+"I see," said Annette; "it is the same in France."
+
+"Oh!" murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback.  "Of course,
+class is everything, really."
+
+"Yes," said Annette; "comme vous etes sage."
+
+'That's all right,' thought Soames, watching her lips, 'only she's pretty
+cynical.'  His knowledge of French was not yet such as to make him grieve
+that she had not said 'tu.'  He slipped his arm round her, and murmured
+with an effort:
+
+"Et vous etes ma belle femme."
+
+Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.
+
+"Oh, non!" she said.  "Oh, non! ne parlez pas Francais, Soames. What is
+that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?"
+
+Soames bit his lip.  "God knows!" he said; "she's always saying
+something;" but he knew better than God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SUSPENDED ANIMATION
+
+The war dragged on.  Nicholas had been heard to say that it would cost
+three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they'd done with it!
+The income-tax was seriously threatened.  Still, there would be South
+Africa for their money, once for all.  And though the possessive instinct
+felt badly shaken at three o'clock in the morning, it recovered by
+breakfast-time with the recollection that one gets nothing in this world
+without paying for it.  So, on the whole, people went about their
+business much as if there were no war, no concentration camps, no
+slippery de Wet, no feeling on the Continent, no anything unpleasant.
+Indeed, the attitude of the nation was typified by Timothy's map, whose
+animation was suspended--for Timothy no longer moved the flags, and they
+could not move themselves, not even backwards and forwards as they should
+have done.
+
+Suspended animation went further; it invaded Forsyte 'Change, and
+produced a general uncertainty as to what was going to happen next. The
+announcement in the marriage column of The Times, 'Jolyon Forsyte to
+Irene, only daughter of the late Professor Heron,' had occasioned doubt
+whether Irene had been justly described.  And yet, on the whole, relief
+was felt that she had not been entered as 'Irene, late the wife,' or 'the
+divorced wife,' 'of Soames Forsyte.'  Altogether, there had been a kind
+of sublimity from the first about the way the family had taken that
+'affair.'  As James had phrased it, 'There it was!'  No use to fuss!
+Nothing to be had out of admitting that it had been a 'nasty jar'--in the
+phraseology of the day.
+
+But what would happen now that both Soames and Jolyon were married again?
+That was very intriguing.  George was known to have laid Eustace six to
+four on a little Jolyon before a little Soames. George was so droll!  It
+was rumoured, too, that he and Dartie had a bet as to whether James would
+attain the age of ninety, though which of them had backed James no one
+knew.
+
+Early in May, Winifred came round to say that Val had been wounded in the
+leg by a spent bullet, and was to be discharged.  His wife was nursing
+him.  He would have a little limp--nothing to speak of. He wanted his
+grandfather to buy him a farm out there where he could breed horses.  Her
+father was giving Holly eight hundred a year, so they could be quite
+comfortable, because his grandfather would give Val five, he had said;
+but as to the farm, he didn't know--couldn't tell: he didn't want Val to
+go throwing away his money.
+
+"But you know," said Winifred, "he must do something."
+
+Aunt Hester thought that perhaps his dear grandfather was wise, because
+if he didn't buy a farm it couldn't turn out badly.
+
+"But Val loves horses," said Winifred.  "It'd be such an occupation for
+him."
+
+Aunt Juley thought that horses were very uncertain, had not Montague
+found them so?
+
+"Val's different," said Winifred; "he takes after me."
+
+Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever.  "I always remember,"
+she added, "how he gave his bad penny to a beggar.  His dear grandfather
+was so pleased.  He thought it showed such presence of mind.  I remember
+his saying that he ought to go into the Navy."
+
+Aunt Hester chimed in: Did not Winifred think that it was much better for
+the young people to be secure and not run any risk at their age?
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "if they were in London, perhaps; in London it's
+amusing to do nothing.  But out there, of course, he'll simply get bored
+to death."
+
+Aunt Hester thought that it would be nice for him to work, if he were
+quite sure not to lose by it.  It was not as if they had no money.
+Timothy, of course, had done so well by retiring.  Aunt Juley wanted to
+know what Montague had said.
+
+Winifred did not tell her, for Montague had merely remarked: "Wait till
+the old man dies."
+
+At this moment Francie was announced.  Her eyes were brimming with a
+smile.
+
+"Well," she said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"Of what, dear?"
+
+"In The Times this morning."
+
+"We haven't seen it, we always read it after dinner; Timothy has it till
+then."
+
+Francie rolled her eyes.
+
+"Do you think you ought to tell us?" said Aunt Juley.  "What was it?"
+
+"Irene's had a son at Robin Hill."
+
+Aunt Juley drew in her breath.  "But," she said, "they were only married
+in March!"
+
+"Yes, Auntie; isn't it interesting?"
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "I'm glad.  I was sorry for Jolyon losing his boy.
+It might have been Val."
+
+Aunt Juley seemed to go into a sort of dream.  "I wonder," she murmured,
+"what dear Soames will think?  He has so wanted to have a son himself.  A
+little bird has always told me that."
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "he's going to--bar accidents."
+
+Gladness trickled out of Aunt Juley's eyes.
+
+"How delightful!" she said.  "When?"
+
+"November."
+
+Such a lucky month!  But she did wish it could be sooner.  It was a long
+time for James to wait, at his age!
+
+To wait!  They dreaded it for James, but they were used to it themselves.
+Indeed, it was their great distraction.  To wait!  For The Times to read;
+for one or other of their nieces or nephews to come in and cheer them up;
+for news of Nicholas' health; for that decision of Christopher's about
+going on the stage; for information concerning the mine of Mrs.
+MacAnder's nephew; for the doctor to come about Hester's inclination to
+wake up early in the morning; for books from the library which were
+always out; for Timothy to have a cold; for a nice quiet warm day, not
+too hot, when they could take a turn in Kensington Gardens.  To wait, one
+on each side of the hearth in the drawing-room, for the clock between
+them to strike; their thin, veined, knuckled hands plying
+knitting-needles and crochet-hooks, their hair ordered to stop--like
+Canute's waves--from any further advance in colour.  To wait in their
+black silks or satins for the Court to say that Hester might wear her
+dark green, and Juley her darker maroon.  To wait, slowly turning over
+and over, in their old minds the little joys and sorrows, events and
+expectancies, of their little family world, as cows chew patient cuds in
+a familiar field.  And this new event was so well worth waiting for.
+Soames had always been their pet, with his tendency to give them
+pictures, and his almost weekly visits which they missed so much, and his
+need for their sympathy evoked by the wreck of his first marriage.  This
+new event--the birth of an heir to Soames--was so important for him, and
+for his dear father, too, that James might not have to die without some
+certainty about things.  James did so dislike uncertainty; and with
+Montague, of course, he could not feel really satisfied to leave no
+grand-children but the young Darties.  After all, one's own name did
+count!  And as James' ninetieth birthday neared they wondered what
+precautions he was taking.  He would be the first of the Forsytes to
+reach that age, and set, as it were, a new standard in holding on to
+life.  That was so important, they felt, at their ages eighty-seven and
+eighty-five; though they did not want to think of themselves when they
+had Timothy, who was not yet eighty-two, to think of.  There was, of
+course, a better world.  'In my Father's house are many mansions' was one
+of Aunt Juley's favourite sayings--it always comforted her, with its
+suggestion of house property, which had made the fortune of dear Roger.
+The Bible was, indeed, a great resource, and on very fine Sundays there
+was church in the morning; and sometimes Juley would steal into Timothy's
+study when she was sure he was out, and just put an open New Testament
+casually among the books on his little table--he was a great reader, of
+course, having been a publisher.  But she had noticed that Timothy was
+always cross at dinner afterwards.  And Smither had told her more than
+once that she had picked books off the floor in doing the room.  Still,
+with all that, they did feel that heaven could not be quite so cosy as
+the rooms in which they and Timothy had been waiting so long.  Aunt
+Hester, especially, could not bear the thought of the exertion.  Any
+change, or rather the thought of a change--for there never was
+any--always upset her very much. Aunt Juley, who had more spirit,
+sometimes thought it would be quite exciting; she had so enjoyed that
+visit to Brighton the year dear Susan died.  But then Brighton one knew
+was nice, and it was so difficult to tell what heaven would be like, so
+on the whole she was more than content to wait.
+
+On the morning of James' birthday, August the 5th, they felt
+extraordinary animation, and little notes passed between them by the hand
+of Smither while they were having breakfast in their beds. Smither must
+go round and take their love and little presents and find out how Mr.
+James was, and whether he had passed a good night with all the
+excitement.  And on the way back would Smither call in at Green
+Street--it was a little out of her way, but she could take the bus up
+Bond Street afterwards; it would be a nice little change for her--and ask
+dear Mrs. Dartie to be sure and look in before she went out of town.
+
+All this Smither did--an undeniable servant trained many years ago under
+Aunt Ann to a perfection not now procurable.  Mr. James, so Mrs. James
+said, had passed an excellent night, he sent his love; Mrs. James had
+said he was very funny and had complained that he didn't know what all
+the fuss was about.  Oh! and Mrs. Dartie sent her love, and she would
+come to tea.
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester, rather hurt that their presents had not received
+special mention--they forgot every year that James could not bear to
+receive presents, 'throwing away their money on him,' as he always called
+it--were 'delighted'; it showed that James was in good spirits, and that
+was so important for him.  And they began to wait for Winifred.  She came
+at four, bringing Imogen, and Maud, just back from school, and 'getting
+such a pretty girl, too,' so that it was extremely difficult to ask for
+news about Annette. Aunt Juley, however, summoned courage to enquire
+whether Winifred had heard anything, and if Soames was anxious.
+
+"Uncle Soames is always anxious, Auntie," interrupted Imogen; "he can't
+be happy now he's got it."
+
+The words struck familiarly on Aunt Juley's ears.  Ah! yes; that funny
+drawing of George's, which had not been shown them!  But what did Imogen
+mean?  That her uncle always wanted more than he could have?  It was not
+at all nice to think like that.
+
+Imogen's voice rose clear and clipped:
+
+"Imagine!  Annette's only two years older than me; it must be awful for
+her, married to Uncle Soames."
+
+Aunt Juley lifted her hands in horror.
+
+"My dear," she said, "you don't know what you're talking about. Your
+Uncle Soames is a match for anybody.  He's a very clever man, and
+good-looking and wealthy, and most considerate and careful, and not at
+all old, considering everything."
+
+Imogen, turning her luscious glance from one to the other of the 'old
+dears,' only smiled.
+
+"I hope," said Aunt Juley quite severely, "that you will marry as good a
+man."
+
+"I shan't marry a good man, Auntie," murmured Imogen; "they're dull."
+
+"If you go on like this," replied Aunt Juley, still very much upset, "you
+won't marry anybody.  We'd better not pursue the subject;" and turning to
+Winifred, she said: "How is Montague?"
+
+That evening, while they were waiting for dinner, she murmured:
+
+"I've told Smither to get up half a bottle of the sweet champagne,
+Hester.  I think we ought to drink dear James' health, and--and the
+health of Soames' wife; only, let's keep that quite secret.  I'll Just
+say like this, 'And you know, Hester!'  and then we'll drink. It might
+upset Timothy."
+
+"It's more likely to upset us," said Aunt Nester.  "But we must, I
+suppose; for such an occasion."
+
+"Yes," said Aunt Juley rapturously, "it is an occasion!  Only fancy if he
+has a dear little boy, to carry the family on!  I do feel it so
+important, now that Irene has had a son.  Winifred says George is calling
+Jolyon 'The Three-Decker,' because of his three families, you know!
+George is droll.  And fancy!  Irene is living after all in the house
+Soames had built for them both.  It does seem hard on dear Soames; and
+he's always been so regular."
+
+That night in bed, excited and a little flushed still by her glass of
+wine and the secrecy of the second toast, she lay with her prayer-book
+opened flat, and her eyes fixed on a ceiling yellowed by the light from
+her reading-lamp.  Young things!  It was so nice for them all!  And she
+would be so happy if she could see dear Soames happy.  But, of course, he
+must be now, in spite of what Imogen had said.  He would have all that he
+wanted: property, and wife, and children!  And he would live to a green
+old age, like his dear father, and forget all about Irene and that
+dreadful case.  If only she herself could be here to buy his children
+their first rocking-horse!  Smither should choose it for her at the
+stores, nice and dappled.  Ah! how Roger used to rock her until she fell
+off!  Oh dear! that was a long time ago!  It was!  'In my Father's house
+are many mansions--'A little scrattling noise caught her ear--'but no
+mice!'  she thought mechanically.  The noise increased. There! it was a
+mouse!  How naughty of Smither to say there wasn't! It would be eating
+through the wainscot before they knew where they were, and they would
+have to have the builders in.  They were such destructive things!  And
+she lay, with her eyes just moving, following in her mind that little
+scrattling sound, and waiting for sleep to release her from it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BIRTH OF A FORSYTE
+
+Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on the path
+above the river, turned round and walked back to the garden door, without
+having realised that he had moved.  The sound of wheels crunching the
+drive convinced him that time had passed, and the doctor gone.  What,
+exactly, had he said?
+
+"This is the position, Mr. Forsyte.  I can make pretty certain of her
+life if I operate, but the baby will be born dead.  If I don't operate,
+the baby will most probably be born alive, but it's a great risk for the
+mother--a great risk.  In either case I don't think she can ever have
+another child.  In her state she obviously can't decide for herself, and
+we can't wait for her mother.  It's for you to make the decision, while
+I'm getting what's necessary. I shall be back within the hour."
+
+The decision!  What a decision!  No time to get a specialist down! No
+time for anything!
+
+The sound of wheels died away, but Soames still stood intent; then,
+suddenly covering his ears, he walked back to the river.  To come before
+its time like this, with no chance to foresee anything, not even to get
+her mother here!  It was for her mother to make that decision, and she
+couldn't arrive from Paris till to-night!  If only he could have
+understood the doctor's jargon, the medical niceties, so as to be sure he
+was weighing the chances properly; but they were Greek to him--like a
+legal problem to a layman.  And yet he must decide!  He brought his hand
+away from his brow wet, though the air was chilly.  These sounds which
+came from her room! To go back there would only make it more difficult.
+He must be calm, clear.  On the one hand life, nearly certain, of his
+young wife, death quite certain, of his child; and--no more children
+afterwards!  On the other, death perhaps of his wife, nearly certain life
+for the child; and--no more children afterwards! Which to choose?....  It
+had rained this last fortnight--the river was very full, and in the
+water, collected round the little house-boat moored by his landing-stage,
+were many leaves from the woods above, brought off by a frost.  Leaves
+fell, lives drifted down--Death!  To decide about death!  And no one to
+give him a hand.  Life lost was lost for good.  Let nothing go that you
+could keep; for, if it went, you couldn't get it back.  It left you bare,
+like those trees when they lost their leaves; barer and barer until you,
+too, withered and came down.  And, by a queer somersault of thought, he
+seemed to see not Annette lying up there behind that window-pane on which
+the sun was shining, but Irene lying in their bedroom in Montpellier
+Square, as it might conceivably have been her fate to lie, sixteen years
+ago.  Would he have hesitated then? Not a moment!  Operate, operate!
+Make certain of her life!  No decision--a mere instinctive cry for help,
+in spite of his knowledge, even then, that she did not love him!  But
+this!  Ah! there was nothing overmastering in his feeling for Annette!
+Many times these last months, especially since she had been growing
+frightened, he had wondered.  She had a will of her own, was selfish in
+her French way.  And yet--so pretty!  What would she wish--to take the
+risk.  'I know she wants the child,' he thought.  'If it's born dead, and
+no more chance afterwards--it'll upset her terribly.  No more chance!
+All for nothing!  Married life with her for years and years without a
+child.  Nothing to steady her!  She's too young. Nothing to look forward
+to, for her--for me!  For me!'  He struck his hands against his chest!
+Why couldn't he think without bringing himself in--get out of himself and
+see what he ought to do?  The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it
+had come in contact with a breastplate.  Out of oneself!  Impossible!
+Out into soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless space!  The very idea
+was ghastly, futile!  And touching there the bedrock of reality, the
+bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames rested for a moment.  When one
+ceased, all ceased; it might go on, but there'd be nothing in it!
+
+He looked at his watch.  In half an hour the doctor would be back. He
+must decide!  If against the operation and she died, how face her mother
+and the doctor afterwards?  How face his own conscience? It was his child
+that she was having.  If for the operation--then he condemned them both
+to childlessness.  And for what else had he married her but to have a
+lawful heir?  And his father--at death's door, waiting for the news!
+'It's cruel!' he thought; 'I ought never to have such a thing to settle!
+It's cruel!'  He turned towards the house.  Some deep, simple way of
+deciding!  He took out a coin, and put it back.  If he spun it, he knew
+he would not abide by what came up!  He went into the dining-room,
+furthest away from that room whence the sounds issued.  The doctor had
+said there was a chance.  In here that chance seemed greater; the river
+did not flow, nor the leaves fall.  A fire was burning.  Soames unlocked
+the tantalus.  He hardly ever touched spirits, but now--he poured himself
+out some whisky and drank it neat, craving a faster flow of blood.  'That
+fellow Jolyon,' he thought; 'he had children already. He has the woman I
+really loved; and now a son by her!  And I--I'm asked to destroy my only
+child!  Annette can't die; it's not possible.  She's strong!'
+
+He was still standing sullenly at the sideboard when he heard the
+doctor's carriage, and went out to him.  He had to wait for him to come
+downstairs.
+
+"Well, doctor?"
+
+"The situation's the same.  Have you decided?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "don't operate!"
+
+"Not?  You understand--the risk's great?"
+
+In Soames' set face nothing moved but the lips.
+
+"You said there was a chance?"
+
+"A chance, yes; not much of one."
+
+"You say the baby must be born dead if you do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you still think that in any case she can't have another?"
+
+"One can't be absolutely sure, but it's most unlikely."
+
+"She's strong," said Soames; "we'll take the risk."
+
+The doctor looked at him very gravely.  "It's on your shoulders," he
+said; "with my own wife, I couldn't."
+
+Soames' chin jerked up as if someone had hit him.
+
+"Am I of any use up there?" he asked.
+
+"No; keep away."
+
+"I shall be in my picture-gallery, then; you know where."
+
+The doctor nodded, and went upstairs.
+
+Soames continued to stand, listening.  'By this time to-morrow,' he
+thought, 'I may have her death on my hands.'  No! it was unfair
+--monstrous, to put it that way!  Sullenness dropped on him again, and he
+went up to the gallery.  He stood at the window.  The wind was in the
+north; it was cold, clear; very blue sky, heavy ragged white clouds
+chasing across; the river blue, too, through the screen of goldening
+trees; the woods all rich with colour, glowing, burnished-an early
+autumn.  If it were his own life, would he be taking that risk?  'But
+she'd take the risk of losing me,' he thought, 'sooner than lose her
+child!  She doesn't really love me!' What could one expect--a girl and
+French?  The one thing really vital to them both, vital to their marriage
+and their futures, was a child!  'I've been through a lot for this,' he
+thought, 'I'll hold on--hold on.  There's a chance of keeping both--a
+chance!' One kept till things were taken--one naturally kept!  He began
+walking round the gallery.  He had made one purchase lately which he knew
+was a fortune in itself, and he halted before it--a girl with dull gold
+hair which looked like filaments of metal gazing at a little golden
+monster she was holding in her hand.  Even at this tortured moment he
+could just feel the extraordinary nature of the bargain he had
+made--admire the quality of the table, the floor, the chair, the girl's
+figure, the absorbed expression on her face, the dull gold filaments of
+her hair, the bright gold of the little monster.  Collecting pictures;
+growing richer, richer!  What use, if....!  He turned his back abruptly
+on the picture, and went to the window.  Some of his doves had flown up
+from their perches round the dovecot, and were stretching their wings in
+the wind.  In the clear sharp sunlight their whiteness almost flashed.
+They flew far, making a flung-up hieroglyphic against the sky.  Annette
+fed the doves; it was pretty to see her.  They took it out of her hand;
+they knew she was matter-of-fact.  A choking sensation came into his
+throat.  She would not--could nod die!  She was too--too sensible; and
+she was strong, really strong, like her mother, in spite of her fair
+prettiness.
+
+It was already growing dark when at last he opened the door, and stood
+listening.  Not a sound!  A milky twilight crept about the stairway and
+the landings below.  He had turned back when a sound caught his ear.
+Peering down, he saw a black shape moving, and his heart stood still.
+What was it?  Death?  The shape of Death coming from her door?  No! only
+a maid without cap or apron.  She came to the foot of his flight of
+stairs and said breathlessly:
+
+"The doctor wants to see you, sir."
+
+He ran down.  She stood flat against the wall to let him pass, and said:
+
+"Oh, Sir! it's over."
+
+"Over?" said Soames, with a sort of menace; "what d'you mean?"
+
+"It's born, sir."
+
+He dashed up the four steps in front of him, and came suddenly on the
+doctor in the dim passage.  The man was wiping his brow.
+
+"Well?" he said; "quick!"
+
+"Both living; it's all right, I think."
+
+Soames stood quite still, covering his eyes.
+
+"I congratulate you," he heard the doctor say; "it was touch and go."
+
+Soames let fall the hand which was covering his face.
+
+"Thanks," he said; "thanks very much.  What is it?"
+
+"Daughter--luckily; a son would have killed her--the head."
+
+A daughter!
+
+"The utmost care of both," he hearts the doctor say, "and we shall do.
+When does the mother come?"
+
+"To-night, between nine and ten, I hope."
+
+"I'll stay till then.  Do you want to see them?"
+
+"Not now," said Soames; "before you go.  I'll have dinner sent up to
+you."  And he went downstairs.
+
+Relief unspeakable, and yet--a daughter!  It seemed to him unfair. To
+have taken that risk--to have been through this agony--and what
+agony!--for a daughter!  He stood before the blazing fire of wood logs in
+the hall, touching it with his toe and trying to readjust himself.  'My
+father!' he thought.  A bitter disappointment, no disguising it!  One
+never got all one wanted in this life!  And there was no other--at least,
+if there was, it was no use!
+
+While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.
+
+"Come up at once, your father sinking fast.--MOTHER."
+
+He read it with a choking sensation.  One would have thought he couldn't
+feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this. Half-past seven,
+a train from Reading at nine, and madame's train, if she had caught it,
+came in at eight-forty--he would meet that, and go on.  He ordered the
+carriage, ate some dinner mechanically, and went upstairs.  The doctor
+came out to him.
+
+"They're sleeping."
+
+"I won't go in," said Soames with relief.  "My father's dying; I have
+to--go up.  Is it all right?"
+
+The doctor's face expressed a kind of doubting admiration.  'If they were
+all as unemotional' he might have been saying.
+
+"Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind.  You'll be down soon?"
+
+"To-morrow," said Soames.  "Here's the address."
+
+The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.
+
+"Good-night!" said Soames abruptly, and turned away.  He put on his fur
+coat.  Death!  It was a chilly business.  He smoked a cigarette in the
+carriage--one of his rare cigarettes.  The night was windy and flew on
+black wings; the carriage lights had to search out the way.  His father!
+That old, old man!  A comfortless night--to die!
+
+The London train came in just as he reached the station, and Madame
+Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the lamplight, came
+towards the exit with a dressing-bag.
+
+"This all you have?" asked Soames.
+
+"But yes; I had not the time.  How is my little one?"
+
+"Doing well--both.  A girl!"
+
+"A girl!  What joy!  I had a frightful crossing!"
+
+Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing, climbed into
+the brougham.
+
+"And you, mon cher?"
+
+"My father's dying," said Soames between his teeth.  "I'm going up. Give
+my love to Annette."
+
+"Tiens!"  murmured Madame Lamotte; "quel malheur!"
+
+Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train.  'The French!'  he
+thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JAMES IS TOLD
+
+A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the air and
+the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the room he had not
+left since the middle of September--and James was in deep waters.  A
+little cold, passing his little strength and flying quickly to his lungs.
+"He mustn't catch cold," the doctor had declared, and he had gone and
+caught it.  When he first felt it in his throat he had said to his
+nurse--for he had one now--"There, I knew how it would be, airing the
+room like that!"  For a whole day he was highly nervous about himself and
+went in advance of all precautions and remedies; drawing every breath
+with extreme care and having his temperature taken every hour.  Emily was
+not alarmed.
+
+But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: "He won't have his
+temperature taken."
+
+Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said softly,
+"How do you feel, James?" holding the thermometer to his lips.  James
+looked up at her.
+
+"What's the good of that?" he murmured huskily; "I don't want to know."
+
+Then she was alarmed.  He breathed with difficulty, he looked terribly
+frail, white, with faint red discolorations.  She had 'had trouble' with
+him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been James for nearly fifty
+years; she couldn't remember or imagine life without James--James, behind
+all his fussiness, his pessimism, his crusty shell, deeply affectionate,
+really kind and generous to them all!
+
+All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was in his
+eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his face which told
+her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope. His very stillness, the
+way he conserved every little scrap of energy, showed the tenacity with
+which he was fighting.  It touched her deeply; and though her face was
+composed and comfortable in the sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks when
+she was out of it.
+
+About tea-time on the third day--she had just changed her dress, keeping
+her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed everything--she
+saw a difference.  'It's no use; I'm tired,' was written plainly across
+that white face, and when she went up to him, he muttered: "Send for
+Soames."
+
+"Yes, James," she said comfortably; "all right--at once."  And she kissed
+his forehead.  A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it off she saw that
+his eyes looked grateful.  Much upset, and without hope now, she sent
+Soames the telegram.
+
+When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was still as
+a grave.  Warmson's broad face looked almost narrow; he took the fur coat
+with a sort of added care, saying:
+
+"Will you have a glass of wine, sir?"
+
+Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.
+
+Warmson's lips twitched.  "He's asking for you, sir;" and suddenly he
+blew his nose.  "It's a long time, sir," he said, "that I've been with
+Mr. Forsyte--a long time."
+
+Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs. This
+house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never seemed to him so
+warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last pilgrimage to his father's
+room.  It was not his taste; but in its own substantial, lincrusta way it
+was the acme of comfort and security. And the night was so dark and
+windy; the grave so cold and lonely!
+
+He paused outside the door.  No sound came from within.  He turned the
+handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived.  The light was
+shaded.  His mother and Winifred were sitting on the far side of the bed;
+the nurse was moving away from the near side where was an empty chair.
+'For me!'  thought Soames.  As he moved from the door his mother and
+sister rose, but he signed with his hand and they sat down again.  He
+went up to the chair and stood looking at his father.  James' breathing
+was as if strangled; his eyes were closed.  And in Soames, looking on his
+father so worn and white and wasted, listening to his strangled
+breathing, there rose a passionate vehemence of anger against Nature,
+cruel, inexorable Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body,
+slowly pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who
+was dearest to him in the world.  His father, of all men, had lived a
+careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward--to have life
+slowly, painfully squeezed out of him!  And, without knowing that he
+spoke, he said: "It's cruel!"
+
+He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face towards the
+bed.  Women!  They put up with things so much better than men.  He took a
+step nearer to his father.  For three days James had not been shaved, and
+his lips and chin were covered with hair, hardly more snowy than his
+forehead.  It softened his face, gave it a queer look already not of this
+world.  His eyes opened.  Soames went quite close and bent over.  The
+lips moved.
+
+"Here I am, Father:"
+
+"Um--what--what news?  They never tell...."  the voice died, and a flood
+of emotion made Soames' face work so that he could not speak. Tell
+him?--yes.  But what?  He made a great effort, got his lips together, and
+said:
+
+"Good news, dear, good--Annette, a son."
+
+"Ah!"  It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,
+triumphant--like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants.  The eyes
+closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again. Soames
+recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down.  The lie he had told, based,
+as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct that after death James
+would not know the truth, had taken away all power of feeling for the
+moment.  His arm brushed against something.  It was his father's naked
+foot.  In the struggle to breathe he had pushed it out from under the
+clothes.  Soames took it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white,
+very cold. What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder
+soon! He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his father's
+laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose again within him.  A
+little sob, quickly smothered, came from Winifred, but his mother sat
+unmoving with her eyes fixed on James.  Soames signed to the nurse.
+
+"Where's the doctor?" he whispered.
+
+"He's been sent for."
+
+"Can't you do anything to ease his breathing?"
+
+"Only an injection; and he can't stand it.  The doctor said, while he was
+fighting...."
+
+"He's not fighting," whispered Soames, "he's being slowly smothered.
+It's awful."
+
+James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying. Soames rose
+and bent over him.  James feebly moved his two hands, and Soames took
+them.
+
+"He wants to be pulled up," whispered the nurse.
+
+Soames pulled.  He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of anger
+passed over James' face.  The nurse plumped the pillows. Soames laid the
+hands down, and bending over kissed his father's forehead.  As he was
+raising himself again, James' eyes bent on him a look which seemed to
+come from the very depths of what was left within.  'I'm done, my boy,'
+it seemed to say, 'take care of them, take care of yourself; take care--I
+leave it all to you.'
+
+"Yes, Yes," Soames whispered, "yes, yes."
+
+Behind him the nurse did he knew, not what, for his father made a tiny
+movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and almost at
+once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay very still.  The
+strained expression on his face passed, a curious white tranquillity took
+its place.  His eyelids quivered, rested; the whole face rested; at ease.
+Only by the faint puffing of his lips could they tell that he was
+breathing.  Soames sank back on his chair, and fell to cherishing the
+foot again.  He heard the nurse quietly crying over there by the fire;
+curious that she, a stranger, should be the only one of them who cried!
+He heard the quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames.  One more old
+Forsyte going to his long rest--wonderful, they were!--wonderful how he
+had held on!  His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on
+the sight of James' lips.  But Soames bent sideways over the feet,
+warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder though they
+grew.  Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful sound such as he had
+never heard, was coming from his father's lips, as if an outraged heart
+had broken with a long moan.  What a strong heart, to have uttered that
+farewell!  It ceased.  Soames looked into the face.  No motion; no
+breath!  Dead!  He kissed the brow, turned round and went out of the
+room.  He ran upstairs to the bedroom, his old bedroom, still kept for
+him; flung himself face down on the bed, and broke into sobs which he
+stilled with the pillow....
+
+A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room.  James lay
+alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with the gravity
+on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the worn fine gravity of
+old coins.
+
+Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room with
+windows thrown open to the London night.
+
+"Good-bye!" he whispered, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HIS
+
+He had much to see to, that night and all next day.  A telegram at
+breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last train
+back to Reading, with Emily's kiss on his forehead and in his ears her
+words:
+
+"I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy."
+
+He reached his house at midnight.  The weather had changed, was mild
+again, as though, having finished its work and sent a Forsyte to his last
+account, it could relax.  A second telegram, received at dinner-time, had
+confirmed the good news of Annette, and, instead of going in, Soames
+passed down through the garden in the moonlight to his houseboat.  He
+could sleep there quite well. Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in
+his fur coat and fell asleep.  He woke soon after dawn and went on deck.
+He stood against the rail, looking west where the river swept round in a
+wide curve under the woods.  In Soames, appreciation of natural beauty
+was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense of grievance if
+it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilised, by his researches
+among landscape painting.  But dawn has power to fertilise the most
+matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred.  It was another world from the
+river he knew, under that remote cool light; a world into which man had
+not entered, an unreal world, like some strange shore sighted by
+discovery.  Its colour was not the colour of convention, was hardly
+colour at all; its shapes were brooding yet distinct; its silence
+stunning; it had no scent.  Why it should move him he could not tell,
+unless it were that he felt so alone in it, bare of all relationship and
+all possessions.  Into such a world his father might be voyaging, for all
+resemblance it had to the world he had left.  And Soames took refuge from
+it in wondering what painter could have done it justice.  The white-grey
+water was like--like the belly of a fish!  Was it possible that this
+world on which he looked was all private property, except the water--and
+even that was tapped!  No tree, no shrub, not a blade of grass, not a
+bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned. And once on a time all
+this was jungle and marsh and water, and weird creatures roamed and
+sported without human cognizance to give them names; rotting luxuriance
+had rioted where those tall, carefully planted woods came down to the
+water, and marsh-misted reeds on that far side had covered all the
+pasture.  Well! they had got it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it,
+and stowed it in lawyers' offices.  And a good thing too!  But once in a
+way, as now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and
+whisper to any human who chanced to be awake: 'Out of my unowned
+loneliness you all came, into it some day you will all return.'
+
+And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world-new to him
+and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of its past--went
+down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp.  When he had drunk it, he
+took out writing materials and wrote two paragraphs:
+
+"On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James Forsyte, in his
+ninety-first year.  Funeral at noon on the 24th at Highgate. No flowers
+by request."
+
+"On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife of Soames
+Forsyte, of a daughter."  And underneath on the blottingpaper he traced
+the word "son."
+
+It was eight o'clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went across to
+the house.  Bushes across the river stood round and bright-coloured out
+of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue and straight; and his doves
+cooed, preening their feathers in the sunlight.
+
+He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh linen and
+dark clothes.
+
+Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.
+
+She looked at his clothes, said, "Don't tell me!" and pressed his hand.
+"Annette is prettee well.  But the doctor say she can never have no more
+children.  You knew that?" Soames nodded.  "It's a pity.  Mais la petite
+est adorable.  Du cafe?"
+
+Soames got away from her as soon as he could.  She offended him--solid,
+matter-of-fact, quick, clear--French.  He could not bear her vowels, her
+'r's'; he resented the way she had looked at him, as if it were his fault
+that Annette could never bear him a son!  His fault!  He even resented
+her cheap adoration of the daughter he had not yet seen.
+
+Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!
+
+One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first moment. On the
+contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from it--fastidious
+possessor that he was.  He was afraid of what Annette was thinking of
+him, author of her agonies, afraid of the look of the baby, afraid of
+showing his disappointment with the present and--the future.
+
+He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he could
+screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the door of their
+room.
+
+Madame Lamotte opened it.
+
+"Ah!  At last you come!  Elle vous attend!"  She passed him, and Soames
+went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his eyes furtive.
+
+Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there.  The baby was hidden
+away somewhere; he could not see it.  He went up to the bed, and with
+sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.
+
+"Here you are then, Soames," she said.  "I am not so bad now.  But I
+suffered terribly, terribly.  I am glad I cannot have any more. Oh! how I
+suffered!"
+
+Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of sympathy,
+absolutely would not come; the thought passed through him: 'An English
+girl wouldn't have said that!'  At this moment he knew with certainty
+that he would never be near to her in spirit and in truth, nor she to
+him.  He had collected her--that was all! And Jolyon's words came rushing
+into his mind: "I should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out
+of chancery."  Well, he had got it out!  Had he got it in again?
+
+"We must feed you up," he said, "you'll soon be strong."
+
+"Don't you want to see baby, Soames?  She is asleep."
+
+"Of course," said Soames, "very much."
+
+He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood staring.
+For the first moment what he saw was much what he had expected to see--a
+baby.  But as he stared and the baby breathed and made little sleeping
+movements with its tiny features, it seemed to assume an individual
+shape, grew to be like a picture, a thing he would know again; not
+repulsive, strangely bud-like and touching.  It had dark hair.  He
+touched it with his finger, he wanted to see its eyes.  They opened, they
+were dark--whether blue or brown he could not tell.  The eyes winked,
+stared, they had a sort of sleepy depth in them.  And suddenly his heart
+felt queer, warm, as if elated.
+
+"Ma petite fleur!" Annette said softly.
+
+"Fleur," repeated Soames: "Fleur! we'll call her that."
+
+The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.
+
+By God! this--this thing was his! By God! this--this thing was his!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Summer of a Forsyte, and In
+Chancery, by John Galsworthy
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+Project Gutenberg Etext Indian Summer of a Forsyte, by Galsworthy
+#5 in our series by John Galsworthy
+#2 in our series of The Forsyte Saga
+
+
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+Title:  Indian Summer of a Forsyte
+
+Contains:
+Indian Summer of a Forsyte
+In Chancery
+
+
+Author:  John Galsworthy
+
+April, 2001  [Etext #2594]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Indian Summer of a Forsyte, by Galsworthy
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+
+
+
+THE FORSYTE SAGA
+VOLUME II
+
+Contains:
+Indian Summer of a Forsyte
+In Chancery
+
+
+
+TO ANDRE CHEVRILLON
+
+
+
+
+Indian Summer of a Forsyte
+
+"And Summer's lease hath all
+       too short a date."
+
+--Shakespeare
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of
+the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the
+terrace of his house at Robin Hill.  He was waiting for the midges
+to bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon.  His
+thin brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of a
+cigar in its tapering, long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail
+had survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when to
+touch nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so
+distinguished.  His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean
+cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering sunshine
+by an old brown Panama hat.  His legs were crossed; in all his
+attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who
+every morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief.  At
+his feet lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a
+Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal
+aver-sion had changed into attachment with the years.  Close to his
+chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of Holly's dolls
+--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen over her legs and her
+doleful nose buried in a black petticoat.  She was never out of
+disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat.  Below the oak
+tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,
+beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the
+coppice, and the prospect 'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin
+Forsyte, from under this very tree, had stared five years ago when
+he drove down with Irene to look at the house.  Old Jolyon had
+heard of his brother's exploit--that drive which had become quite
+celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.' Swithin! And the fellow had gone
+and died, last November, at the age of only seventy-nine, renewing
+the doubt whether Forsytes could live for ever, which had first
+arisen when Aunt Ann passed away.  Died! and left only Jolyon and
+James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester, Susan!  And
+old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except when I
+get that pain.'
+
+His memory went searching.  He had not felt his age since he had
+bought his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it
+here at Robin Hill over three years ago.  It was as if he had been
+getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son
+and his grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second
+marriage, Jolly and Holly; living down here out of the racket of
+London and the cackle of Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a
+delicious atmosphere of no work and all play, with plenty of
+occupation in the perfecting and mellowing of the house and its
+twenty acres, and in ministering to the whims of Holly and Jolly.
+All the knots and crankiness, which had gathered in his heart
+during that long and tragic business of June, Soames, Irene his
+wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.  Even June
+had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in Spain
+she was taking now with her father and her stepmother.  Curiously
+perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank,
+because his son was not there.  Jo was never anything but a comfort
+and a pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women,
+somehow--even the best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of
+course one admired them.
+
+Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first
+elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had
+sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou'-
+west, too--a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let
+the sun fall on his chin and cheek.  Somehow, to-day, he wanted
+company wanted a pretty face to look at.  People treated the old as
+if they wanted nothing.  And with the un-Forsytean philosophy which
+ever intruded on his soul, he thought: 'One's never had enough'
+
+With a foot in the grave one'll want something, I shouldn't be
+surprised!'  Down here--away from the exigencies of affairs--his
+grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain,
+to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
+sesame,' to him day and night.  And sesame had opened--how much,
+perhaps, he did not know.  He had always been responsive to what
+they had begun to call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously
+responsive, though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset
+a sunset and a view a view, however deeply they might move him.
+But nowadays Nature actually made him ache, he appreciated it so.
+Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening days, with Holly's
+hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking studiously for
+what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses open,
+fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and
+saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and
+glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field;
+listening to the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows
+chewing the cud, flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of
+these fine days he ached a little from sheer love of it all,
+feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to
+enjoy it.  The thought that some day perhaps not ten years hence,
+perhaps not five--all this world would be taken away from him,
+before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in
+the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon.  If anything
+came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not Robin
+Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of
+those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had
+increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had
+worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off,
+leaving him reverent before three things alone--beauty, upright
+conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now
+was beauty.  He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could
+still read The Tines, but he was liable at any moment to put it
+down if he heard a blackbird sing.  Upright conduct, property--
+somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never
+tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get
+enough of them.  Staring into the stilly radiance of the early
+evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a
+thought came to him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,'
+which he had recently heard at Covent Garden.  A beautiful opera,
+not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps
+even more lovely; some-thing classical and of the Golden Age about
+it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old
+days'--highest praise he could bestow.  The yearning of Orpheus for
+the beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in
+life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang and throbbed
+through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of
+the world that evening.  And with the tip of his cork-soled,
+elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog
+Balthasar, caus-ing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for
+though he was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of
+the fact.  When he had finished, he rubbed the place he had been
+scratching against his master's calf, and settled down again with
+his chin over the instep of the disturbing boot.  And into old
+Jolyon's mind came a sudden recollection--a face he had seen at
+that opera three weeks ago--Irene, the wife of his precious nephew
+Soames, that man of property! Though he had not met her since the
+day of  the 'At Home' in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which
+celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred engagement to young
+Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had always admired
+her--a very pretty creature.  After the death of young Bosinney,
+whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard that
+she had left Soames at once.  Goodness only knew what she had been
+doing since.  That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in
+front, had been literally the only reminder these three years that
+she was still alive.  No one ever spoke of her.  And yet Jo had
+told him some-thing once--something which had upset him completely.
+The boy had got it from George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen
+Bosinney in the fog the day he was run over--something which
+explained the young fellow's distress--an act of Soames towards his
+wife--a shocking act.  Jo had seen her, too, that afternoon, after
+the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his description had
+always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he had called
+her.  And next day June had gone there  bottled up her feelings and
+gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her mistress
+had slipped out in the night and vanished.  A tragic business
+altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to
+lay hands on her again.  And he was living at Brighton, and
+journeying up and down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For
+when he once took a dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old
+Jolyon never got over it.  He remembered still the sense of relief
+with which he had heard the news of Irene's disappearance.  It had
+been shocking to think of her a prisoner in that house to which she
+must have wandered back, when Jo saw her, wandered back for a
+moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after seeing that news,
+'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street.  Her face had struck
+him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had remem-
+bered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it.  A
+young woman still--twenty-eight perhaps.  Ah, well! Very likely she
+had another lover by now.  But at this subversive thought--for
+married women should never love: once, even, had been too much--his
+instep rose, and with it the dog Balthasar's head.  The sagacious
+animal stood up and looked into old Jolyon's face.  'Walk?' he
+seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered: "Come on, old chap!"
+
+Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of
+buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery.  This feature,
+where very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below
+the level of the lawn so that it might come up again on the level
+of the other lawn and give the impression of irregularity, so
+important in horticulture.  Its rocks and earth were beloved of the
+dog Balthasar, who sometimes found a mole there.  Old Jolyon made a
+point of passing through it because, though it was not beautiful,
+he intended that it should be, some day, and he would think: 'I
+must get Varr to come down and look at it; he's better than Beech.'
+For plants, like houses and human complaints, required the best
+expert consideration.  It was inhabited by snails, and if
+accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell
+them the story of the little boy who said: 'Have plummers got
+leggers, Mother?  'No, sonny.'  'Then darned if I haven't been and
+swallowed a snileybob.'  And when they skipped and clutched his
+hand, thinking of the snileybob going down the little boy's 'red
+lane,' his, eyes would twinkle.  Emerging from the fernery, he
+opened the wicket gate, which just there led into the first field,
+a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick walls, the
+vegetable garden had been carved.  Old Jolyon avoided this, which
+did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.
+Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the
+gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day.
+Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily
+opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when
+'his little sweet' had got over the upset which had followed on her
+eating a tomato at lunch--her little arrangements were very
+delicate.  Now that Jolly had gone to school--his first term--Holly
+was with him nearly all day long, and he missed her badly.  He felt
+that pain too, which often bothered him now, a little dragging at
+his left side.  He looked back up the hill.  Really, poor young
+Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house; he would
+have done very well for himself if he had lived!  And where was he
+now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of
+his tragic love affair.  Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused
+in the general?  Who could say?  That dog was getting his legs
+muddy!  And he moved towards the coppice.  There had been the most
+delightful lot of bluebells, and--he knew where some still lingered
+like little patches of sky fallen irk between the trees, away out
+of the sun.  He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there
+installed, and pursued a path into the thick of the saplings,
+making for one of the bluebell plots.  Balthasar, preceding him
+once more, uttered a low growl.  Old Jolyon stirred him with his
+foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where there was no room
+to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of his woolly
+back.  Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's stivered
+hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old Jolyon
+also felt something move along his spine.  And then the path
+turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting.
+Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
+trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned.
+Powers above!  The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he
+had just been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things
+blurred, as if a spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight
+perhaps on her violet-grey frock! And then she rose and stood
+smiling, her head a little to one side.  Old Jolyon thought: 'How
+pretty she is!' She did not speak, neither did he; and he realized
+why with a certain admiration.  She was here no doubt because of
+some memory, and did not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar
+explanation.
+
+"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet.
+Come here, you!"
+
+But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand
+down and stroked his head.  Old Jolyon said quickly:
+
+"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."
+
+"Oh, yes! I did."
+
+He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you
+think one could miss seeing you?'
+
+"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly.  "I'm alone; I drove
+up for the opera.  The Ravogli's good.  Have you seen the cow-
+houses?"
+
+In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like
+emotion he moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and
+she moved beside him.  Her figure swayed faintly, like the best
+kind of French figures; her dress, too, was a sort of French grey.
+He noticed two or three silver threads in her amber-coloured hair,
+strange hair with those dark eyes of hers, and that creamy-pale
+face.  A sudden sidelong look from the velvety brown eyes disturbed
+him.  It seemed to come from deep and far, from another world
+almost, or at all events from some one not living very much in
+this.  And he said mechanically
+
+"Where are you living now?"
+
+"I have a little flat in Chelsea."
+
+He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
+anything; but the perverse word came out:
+
+"Alone?"
+
+She nodded.  It was a relief to know that.  And it came into his
+mind that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of
+this coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.
+
+"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk.  This one's
+a pretty creature.  Woa, Myrtle!"
+
+The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own,
+was standing absolutely still, not having long been milked.  She
+looked round at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild,
+cynical eyes, and from her grey lips a little dribble of saliva
+threaded its way towards the straw.  The scent of hay and vanilla
+and ammonia rose in the dim light of the cool cow-house; and old
+Jolyon said:
+
+"You must come up and have some dinner with me.  I'll send you home
+in the carriage."
+
+He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt,
+with her memories.  But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a
+charming figure, beauty!  He had been alone all the afternoon.
+Perhaps his eyes were wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle
+Jolyon.  I should like to."
+
+He rubbed his hands, and said:
+
+"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar,
+they ascended through the field.  The sun was almost level in their
+faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but
+little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like
+fineness--the special look of life unshared with others.  "I'll
+take her in by the terrace, "he thought: "I won't make a common
+visitor of her."
+
+"What do you do all day?" he said.
+
+"Teach music; I have another interest, too."
+
+"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing,
+and smoothing its black petticoat.  "Nothing like it, is there?  I
+don't do any now.  I'm getting on.  What interest is that?"
+
+"Trying to help women who've come to grief."  Old Jolyon did not
+quite understand.  "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a
+shock that she meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he
+had used that expression.  Assisting the Magdalenes of London!
+What a weird and terrifying interest!  And, curiosity overcoming
+his natural shrinking, he asked:
+
+"Why? What do you do for them?"
+
+"Not much.  I've no money to spare.  I can only give sympathy and
+food sometimes."
+
+Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse.  He said hastily:
+"How d'you get hold of them?"
+
+"I go to a hospital."
+
+"A hospital! Phew!"
+
+"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
+beauty."
+
+Old Jolyon straightened the doll.  "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha!
+Yes! A sad business!" and he moved towards the house.  Through a
+French window, under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her
+into the room where he was wont to study 'The Times' and the sheets
+of an agricultural magazine, with huge illustrations of mangold
+wurzels, and the like, which provided Holly with material for her
+paint brush.
+
+"Dinner's in half an hour.  You'd like to wash your hands!  I'll
+take you to June's room."
+
+He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last
+visited this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps-
+-he did not know, could not say!  All that was dark, and he wished
+to leave it so.  But what changes!  And in the hall he said:
+
+"My boy Jo's a painter, you know.  He's got a lot of taste.  It
+isn't mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."
+
+She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and
+music room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great
+skylight.  Old Jolyon had an odd impression of her.  Was she trying
+to conjure somebody from the shades of that space where the
+colouring was all pearl-grey and silver? He would have had gold
+himself; more lively and solid.  But Jo had French tastes, and it
+had come out shadowy like that, with an effect as of the fume of
+cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and there by a
+little blaze of blue or crimson colour.  It was not his dream!
+Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces
+of still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity
+was precious.  And now where were they?  Sold for a song!  That
+something which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times
+had warned him against the struggle to retain them.  But in his
+study he still had 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'
+
+He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his
+side.
+
+"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements.  I've
+had them tiled.  The nurseries are along there.  And this is Jo's
+and his wife's.  They all communicate.  But you remember, I
+expect."
+
+Irene nodded.  They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large
+room with a small bed, and several windows.
+
+"This is mine," he said.  The walls were covered with the
+photographs of children and watercolour sketches, and he added
+doubtfully:
+
+"These are Jo's.  The view's first-rate.  You can see the Grand
+Stand at Epsom in clear weather."
+
+The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a
+luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous
+day.  Few houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened,
+away to a loom of downs.
+
+"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be
+when we're all gone.  Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet
+here in the mornings.  I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."
+
+Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its
+mournful look.  'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought.  'A
+pretty face, but sad!'  And taking up his can of hot water he went
+out into the gallery.
+
+"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting
+the can down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the
+door behind her he went back to his own room.  Brushing his hair
+with his great ebony brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de
+Cologne, he mused.  She had come so strangely--a sort of visit-
+ation; mysterious, even romantic, as if his desire for company, for
+beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was which fulfilled that
+sort of thing.  And before the mirror he straightened his still
+upright figure, passed the brushes over his great white moustache,
+touched up his eyebrows with eau de Cologne, and rang the bell.
+
+"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me.
+Let cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and
+pair at half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night.  Is Miss
+Holly asleep?"
+
+The maid thought not.  And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery,
+stole on tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose
+hinges he kept specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the
+evenings without being heard.
+
+But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that
+type which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they
+had completed her.  Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on
+her face was perfect peace--her little arrangements were evidently
+all right again.  And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room,
+stood adoring her!  It was so charming, solemn, and loving--that
+little face.  He had more than his share of the blessed capacity of
+living again in the young.  They were to him his future life--all
+of a future life that his fundamental pagan sanity perhaps
+admitted.  There she was with everything before her, and his
+blood--some of it--in her tiny veins.  There she was, his little
+companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that
+she knew nothing but love.  His heart swelled, and he went out,
+stilling the sound of his patent-leather boots.  In the corridor an
+eccentric notion attacked him: To think that children should come
+to that which Irene had told him she was helping!  Women who were
+all, once, little things like this one sleeping there!  'I must
+give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't bear to think of them!'  They
+had never borne reflecting on, those poor outcasts; wounding too
+deeply the core of true refinement hidden under layers of
+conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously the
+deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even
+now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society
+of a pretty woman.  And he went downstairs, through the swinging
+doors, to the back regions.  There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock
+worth at least two pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better
+than any Johan-nisberg that ever went down throat; a wine of
+perfect bouquet, sweet as a nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a
+bottle out, handling it like a baby, and holding it level to the
+light, to look.  Enshrined in its coat of dust, that mellow
+coloured, slender--necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.  Three
+years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to be in
+prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God
+he had kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it.  She
+would appreciate this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen.  He wiped
+the bottle, drew the cork with his own hands, put his nose down,
+inhaled its perfume, and went back to the music room.
+
+Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a
+lace scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was
+visible, and the pallor of her neck.  In her grey frock she made a
+pretty picture for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.
+
+He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went.  The room, which had
+been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held
+now but a little round table.  In his present solitude the big
+dining-table oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed
+till his son came back.  Here in the company of two really good
+copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone.  It was the
+only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather.  He had
+never been a large eater, like that great chap Swithin, or Sylvanus
+Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies of past times; and
+to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him but a
+sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might
+come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar.  But
+this evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her
+across the little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland,
+telling her stories of his travels there, and other experiences
+which he could no longer recount to his son and grand-daughter
+because they knew them.  This fresh audience was precious to him;
+he had never become one of those old men who ramble round and round
+the fields of reminiscence.  Himself quickly fatigued by the
+insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others, and his
+natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in his
+relations with a woman.  He would have liked to draw her out, but
+though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he
+told her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which
+constituted half her fascination.  He could not bear women who
+threw their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-
+mouthed women who laid down the law and knew more than you did.
+There was only one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm;
+and the quieter it was, the more he liked it.  And this one had
+charm, shadowy as afternoon sunlight on those Italian hills and
+valleys he had loved.  The feeling, too, that she was, as it were,
+apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to himself, a strangely
+desirable companion.  When a man is very old and quite out of the
+running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of youth, for
+he would still be first in the heart of beauty.  And he drank his
+hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young.  But the dog
+Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the
+interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish
+glasses full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.
+
+The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room.
+And, cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:
+
+"Play me some Chopin."
+
+By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall
+know the texture of men's souls.  Old Jolyon could not bear--a
+strong cigar or Wagner's music.  He loved Beethoven and Mozart,
+Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the
+operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by
+Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli.  In
+yielding to these tastes he had been conscious of divergence from
+the standard of the Golden Age.  Their poetry was not that of
+Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and Titian; Mozart and
+Beethoven.  It was, as it were, behind a veil; their poetry hit no
+one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and turned
+and twisted, and melted up the heart.  And, never certain that this
+was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the
+pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.
+
+Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
+pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see
+her, crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar.  She sat a few
+moments with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind
+for what to give him.  Then she began and within old Jolyon there
+arose a sorrowful pleasure, not quite like anything else in the
+world.  He fell slowly into a trance, interrupted only by the
+movements of taking the cigar out of his mouth at long intervals,
+and replacing it.  She was there, and the hock within him, and the
+scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of sunshine lingering
+into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and bluish trees
+above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of lavender
+where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy, with
+dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and
+through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a
+cow's horn.  He opened his eyes.  Beautiful piece; she played well-
+-the touch of an angel!  And he closed them again.  He felt mirac-
+ulously sad and happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in
+full honey flower.  Not live one's own life again, but just stand
+there and bask in the smile of a woman's eyes, and enjoy the
+bouquet!  And he jerked his hand; the dog Balthasar had reached up
+and licked it.
+
+"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"
+
+She began to play again.  This time the resemblance between her and
+'Chopin' struck him.  The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in
+her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft
+darkness of her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a
+golden moon.  Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in
+that music.  A long blue spiral from his cigar ascended and
+dispersed.  'So we go out!' he thought.  'No more beauty! Nothing?'
+
+Again Irene stopped.
+
+"Would you like some Gluck?  He used to write his music in a sunlit
+garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."
+
+"Ah!; yes.  Let's have 'Orfeo."' Round about him now were fields of
+gold and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight,
+bright birds flying to and fro.  All was summer.  Lingering waves
+of sweetness and regret flooded his soul.  Some cigar ash dropped,
+and taking out a silk handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a
+mingled scent as of snuff and eau de Cologne.  'Ah!' he thought,
+'Indian summer--that's all!' and he said: "You haven't played me
+'Che faro.'"
+
+She did not answer; did not move.  He was conscious of something--
+some strange upset.  Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a
+pang of remorse shot through him.  What a clumsy chap!  Like
+Orpheus, she of course--she too was looking for her lost one in the
+hall of memory!  And disturbed to the heart, he got up from his
+chair.  She had gone to the great window at the far end.  Gingerly
+he followed.  Her hands were folded over her breast; he could just
+see her cheek, very white.  And, quite emotionalized, he said:
+
+"There, there, my love!"  The words had escaped him mechanically,
+for they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their
+effect was instantaneously distressing.  She raised her arms,
+covered her face with them, and wept.
+
+Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age.  The
+passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike
+the control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had
+never before broken down in the presence of another being.
+
+"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out
+reverently, touched her.  She turned, and leaned the arms which
+covered her face against him.  Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping
+one thin hand on her shoulder.  Let her cry her heart out--it would
+do her good.
+
+And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine
+them.
+
+The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the
+last of daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the
+lamp within; there was a scent of new-mown grass.  With the wisdom
+of a long life old Jolyon did not speak.  Even grief sobbed itself
+out in time; only Time was good for sorrow--Time who saw the
+passing of each mood, each emotion in turn; Time the layer-to-rest.
+There came into his mind the words: 'As panteth the hart after
+cooling streams'--but they were of no use to him.  Then, conscious
+of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her eyes.  He put his
+chin forward, pressed his moustache against her forehead, and felt
+her shake with a quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which
+shakes itself free of raindrops.  She put his hand to her lips, as
+if saying: "All over now!  Forgive me!"
+
+The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to
+where she had been so upset.  And the dog Balthasar, following,
+laid the bone of one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.
+
+Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of
+nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet
+to cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and
+Chelsea, turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands,
+whose skin, faintly freckled, had such an aged look.
+
+"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds.
+It's very old.  That dog leaves his bones all over the place.  This
+old 'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the
+Marquis, came to grief.  But you don't remember.  Here's a nice
+piece of Chelsea.  Now, what would you say this was?"  And he was
+comforted, feeling that, with her taste, she was taking a real
+interest in these things; for, after all, nothing better composes
+the nerves than a doubtful piece of china.
+
+When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said
+
+"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you
+these by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing.
+This dog seems to have taken a fancy to you."
+
+For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his
+side against her leg.  Going out under the porch with her, he said:
+
+"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter.  Take this for your
+protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand.
+He saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh Uncle
+Jolyon!" and a real throb of pleasure went through him.  That meant
+one or two poor creatures helped a little, and it meant that she
+would come again.  He put his hand in at the window and grasped
+hers once more.  The carriage rolled away.  He stood looking at the
+moon and the shadows of the trees, and thought: 'A sweet night! She
+...!'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny.  Old Jolyon
+walked and talked with Holly.  At first he felt taller and full of
+a new vigour; then he felt restless.  Almost every afternoon they
+would enter the coppice, and walk as far as the log.  'Well, she's
+not there!' he would think, 'of course not!'  And he would feel a
+little shorter, and drag his feet walking up the hill home, with
+his hand clapped to his left side.  Now and then the thought would
+move in him: 'Did she come--or did I dream it?' and he would stare
+at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him.  Of course she
+would not come again!  He opened the letters from Spain with less
+excitement.  They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
+that he could bear it.  Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes
+and looked at where she had sat.  She was not there, so he
+unscrewed his eyes again.
+
+On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some
+boots.'  He ordered Beacon, and set out.  Passing from Putney
+towards Hyde Park he reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and
+see her.'  And he called out: "Just drive me to where you took that
+lady the other night."  The coachman turned his broad red face, and
+his juicy lips answered: "The lady in grey, sir?"
+
+"Yes, the lady in grey."  What other ladies were there!  Stodgy
+chap!
+
+The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
+standing a little back from the river.  With a practised eye old
+Jolyon saw that they were cheap.  'I should think about sixty pound
+a year,'  he mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board.  The
+name 'Forsyte' was not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C'
+were the words: 'Mrs. Irene Heron.'  Ah! She had taken her maiden
+name again!  And somehow this pleased him.  He went upstairs
+slowly, feeling his side a little.  He stood a moment, before
+ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and fluttering there.  She
+would not be in!  And then Boots!  The thought was black.  What did
+he want with boots at his age? He could not wear out all those he
+had.
+
+"Your mistress at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
+
+"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"
+
+Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one
+would say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were
+drawn.  It held a cottage piano and little else save a vague
+fragrance and good taste.  'He stood in the middle, with his top
+hat in his hand, and thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!'
+There was a mirror above the fireplace, and he saw himself
+reflected.  An old-looking chap!  He heard a rustle, and turned
+round.  She was so close that his moustache almost brushed her
+forehead, just under her hair.
+
+"I was driving up," he said.  "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask
+you how you got up the other night."
+
+And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved.  She was really
+glad to see him, perhaps.
+
+"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the
+Park?"
+
+But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned.  The Park!
+James and Emily!  Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his
+precious family would be there very likely, prancing up and down.
+And they would go and wag their tongues about having seen him with
+her, afterwards.  Better not!  He did not wish to revive the echoes
+of the past on Forsyte 'Change.'  He removed a white hair from the
+lapel of his closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand
+over his cheeks, moustache, and square chin.  It felt very hollow
+there under the cheekbones.  He had not been eating much lately--he
+had better get that little whippersnapper who attended Holly to
+give him a tonic.  But she had come back and when they were in the
+carriage, he said:
+
+"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added
+with a twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been
+in the secret of his thoughts.
+
+Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and
+strolled towards the water.
+
+"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not
+sorry."
+
+She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle
+Jolyon?"
+
+He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"
+
+"And have you?"
+
+"I?  I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay."  And
+perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the
+beautiful.
+
+She drew a deep breath.  "I never regretted--I couldn't.  Did you
+ever love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him.  Had he?  He
+did not seem to remember that he ever had.  But he did not like to
+say this to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose
+life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.  And he
+thought: 'If I had met you when I was young I--I might have made a
+fool of myself, perhaps.'  And a longing to escape in generalities
+beset him.
+
+"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often.  It was the
+Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I
+dare say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."
+
+"Phil adored them."
+
+Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all
+round a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like
+this.  She wanted to talk about her lover!  Well!  If it was any
+pleasure to her!  And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor
+in him, I fancy."
+
+"Yes.  He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted
+way the Greeks gave themselves to art."
+
+Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
+symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes
+of his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?
+
+"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon.
+
+Old Jolyon looked round at her.  Was she chaffing him?  No, her
+eyes were soft as velvet.  Was she flattering him?  But if so, why?
+There was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.
+
+"Phil thought so.  He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I
+admire him."'
+
+Ah! There it was again.  Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him!
+And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half
+grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between herself
+and him.
+
+"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured.  "It's hot; I
+feel the heat nowadays.  Let's sit down."
+
+They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves
+covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon.  A pleasure
+to sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him.
+And the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:
+
+"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw.  He'd be at his
+best with you.  His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had
+stiffed the word 'fangled.'
+
+"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty."  Old
+Jolyon thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle:
+"Well, I have, or I shouldn't be sitting here with you."  She was
+fascinating when she smiled with her eyes, like that!
+
+"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old.  Phil
+had real insight."
+
+He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of
+a longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was
+precious to hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which
+quite true!--had never grown old.  Was that because--unlike her and
+her dead lover, he had never loved to desperation, had always kept
+his balance, his sense of symmetry.  Well! It had left him power,
+at eighty-four, to admire beauty.  And he thought, 'If I were a
+painter or a sculptor!  But I'm an old chap.  Make hay while the
+sun shines.'
+
+A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at
+the edge of the shadow from their tree.  The sunlight fell cruelly
+on their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces.  "We're an ugly lot!"
+said old Jolyon suddenly.  "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs
+over that."
+
+"Love triumphs over everything!"
+
+"The young think so," he muttered.
+
+"Love has no age, no limit; and no death."
+
+With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so
+large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life!  But
+this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he
+said: "Well, if it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George!
+it's got a lot to put up with."
+
+Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff.  The
+great clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got
+a rush of blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had
+been.
+
+She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she
+murmured:
+
+"It's strange enough that I'm alive."
+
+Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.
+
+"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."
+
+"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a
+second it was--Phil."
+
+Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble.  She put her hand over them, took
+it away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the
+Embankment; a woman caught me by the dress.  She told me about
+herself.  When one knows that others suffer, one's ashamed."
+
+"One of those?"
+
+She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one
+who has never known a struggle with desperation.  Almost against
+his will he muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"
+
+"I didn't care whether I lived or died.  When you're like that,
+Fate ceases to want to kill you.  She took care of me three days--
+she never left me.  I had no money.  That's why I do what I can for
+them, now."
+
+But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!'  What fate could compare
+with that?  Every other was involved in it.
+
+"I wish you had come to me," he said.  "Why didn't you?"  But Irene
+did not answer.
+
+"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose?  Or was it June who kept
+you away?  How are you getting on now?"  His eyes involuntarily
+swept her body.  Perhaps even now she was--!  And yet she wasn't
+thin--not really!
+
+"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough."  The answer
+did not reassure him; he had lost confidence.  And that fellow
+Soames!  But his sense of justice stifled condemnation.  No, she
+would certainly have died rather than take another penny from him.
+Soft as she looked, there must be strength in her somewhere--
+strength and fidelity.  But what business had young Bosinney to
+have got run over and left her stranded like this!
+
+"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want,
+or I shall be quite cut up."  And putting on his hat, he rose.
+"Let's go and get some tea.  I told that lazy chap to put the
+horses up for an hour, and come for me at your place.  We'll take a
+cab presently; I can't walk as I used to."
+
+He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the
+sound of her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of
+a charming form moving beside him.  He enjoyed their tea at
+Ruffel's in the High Street, and came out thence with a great box
+of chocolates swung on his little finger.  He enjoyed the drive
+back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his cigar.  She had promised
+to come down next Sunday and play to him again, and already in
+thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her to carry
+back to town.  It was a pleasure to give her a little pleasure, if
+it WERE pleasure from an old chap like him!  The carriage was
+already there when they arrived.  Just like that fellow, who was
+always late when he was wanted!  Old Jolyon went in for a minute to
+say good-bye.  The little dark hall of the fiat was impregnated
+with a disagreeable odour of patchouli, and on a bench against the
+wall--its only furniture--he saw a figure sitting.  He heard Irene
+say softly: "Just one minute."  In the little drawing-room when the
+door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of your protegees?"
+
+"Yes.  Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."
+
+He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had
+frightened so many in its time.  The idea of her thus actually in
+contact with this outcast, grieved and frightened him.  What could
+she do for them?  Nothing.  Only soil and make trouble for herself,
+perhaps.  And he said: "Take care, my dear!  The world puts the
+worst construction on everything."
+
+"I know that."
+
+He was abashed by her quiet smile.  "Well then--Sunday," he
+murmured: "Good-bye."
+
+She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.
+
+"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself."  And he went
+out, not looking towards the figure on the bench.  He drove home by
+way of Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and
+tell them to send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy.  She
+must want picking-up sometimes!  Only in Richmond Park did he
+remember that he had gone up to order himself some boots, and was
+surprised that he could have had so paltry an idea.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had
+never pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy
+hours elapsing before Sunday came.  The spirit of the future, with
+the charm of the unknown, put up her lips instead.  Old Jolyon was
+not restless now, and paid no visits to the log, because she was
+coming to lunch.  There is wonderful finality about a meal; it
+removes a world of doubts, for no one misses meals except for
+reasons beyond control.  He played many games with Holly on the
+lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to be ready to
+bowl to Jolly in the holidays.  For she was not a Forsyte, but
+Jolly was--and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
+reached the age of eighty-five.  The dog Balthasar, in attendance,
+lay on the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded,
+till his face was like the harvest moon.  And because the time was
+getting shorter, each day was longer and more golden than the last.
+On Friday night he took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and
+though it was not the liver side, there is no remedy like that.
+Anyone telling him that he had found a new excitement in life and
+that excitement was not good for him, would have been met by one of
+those steady and rather defiant looks of his deep-set iron-grey
+eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own business best.'  He
+always had and always would.
+
+On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to
+church, he visited the strawberry beds.  There, accompanied by the
+dog Balthasar, he examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in
+finding at least two dozen berries which were really ripe.
+Stooping was not good for him, and he became very dizzy and red in
+the forehead.  Having placed the strawberries in a dish on the
+dining-table, he washed his hands and bathed his forehead with eau
+de Cologne.  There, before the mirror, it occurred to him that he
+was thinner.  What a 'threadpaper' he had been when he was young!
+It was nice to be slim--he could not bear a fat chap; and yet
+perhaps his cheeks were too thin!  She was to arrive by train at
+half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road past Drage's
+farm at the far end of the coppice.  And, having looked into June's
+room to see that there was hot water ready, he set forth to meet
+her, leisurely, for his heart was beating.  The air smelled sweet,
+larks sang, and the Grand Stand at Epsom was visible.  A perfect
+day!  On just such a one, no doubt, six years ago, Soames had
+brought young Bosinney down with him to look at the site before
+they began to build.  It was Bosinney who had pitched on the exact
+spot for the house--as June had often told him.  In these days he
+was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit were
+really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of
+seeing--her.  Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart, to
+whom she had given her whole self with rapture!  At his age one
+could not, of course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him
+a queer vague aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal
+jealousy; and a feeling, too, more generous, of pity for that love
+so early lost.  All over in a few poor months!  Well, well!  He
+looked at his watch before entering the coppice--only a quarter
+past, twenty-five minutes to wait!  And then, turning the corner of
+the path, he saw her exactly where he had seen her the first time,
+on the log; and realised that she must have come by the earlier
+train to sit there alone for a couple of hours at least.  Two hours
+of her society missed!  What memory could make that log so dear to
+her?  His face showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:
+
+"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."
+
+"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like.  You're looking a
+little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."
+
+That she should have to give lessons worried him.  Lessons to a
+parcel of young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.
+
+"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.
+
+"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."
+
+Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.
+
+"They love music, and they're very kind."
+
+"They had better be, by George!"  He took her arm--his side always
+hurt him a little going uphill--and said:
+
+"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups?  They came like
+that in a night."
+
+Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the
+flowers and the honey.  "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let
+them turn the cows in yet."  Then, remembering that she had come to
+talk about Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the
+stables:
+
+"I expect be wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of
+time, if I remember."
+
+But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he
+knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of her
+dead lover.
+
+"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph,
+"is my little sweet.  She'll be back from Church directly.  There's
+something about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did
+not seem to him peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of
+saying: "There's something about you which reminds me a little of
+her."  Ah! And here she was!
+
+Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose
+digestion had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of
+Strasbourg, came rushing towards them from under the oak tree.  She
+stopped about a dozen yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that
+this was all she had in her mind.  Old Jolyon who knew better,
+said:
+
+"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."
+
+Holly raised herself and looked up.  He watched the two of them
+with a twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry,
+passing into a shy smile too, and then to something deeper.  She
+had a sense of beauty, that child--knew what was what!  He enjoyed
+the sight of the kiss between them.
+
+"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce.  Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"
+
+For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part
+of the service connected with this world absorbed what interest in
+church remained to him.  Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery
+hand clad in a black kid glove--she had been in the best families--
+and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask:
+"Are you well-brrred?" Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything
+unpleasing to her--a not uncommon occurrence he would say to them:
+"The little Tayleurs never did that--they were such well-brrred
+little children."  Jolly hated the little Tayleurs; Holly wondered
+dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them.  'A thin rum
+little soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle Beauce.
+
+Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had
+picked in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another
+bottle of the Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic
+spirituality, and a conviction that he would have a touch of eczema
+to-morrow.
+
+After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee.
+It was no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew
+to write her Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been
+endangered in the past by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily
+in warning to the children to eat slowly and digest what they had
+eaten.  At the foot of the bank, on a carriage rug, Holly and the
+dog Balthasar teased and loved each other, and in the shade old
+Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar luxuriously savoured,
+gazed at Irene sitting in the swing.  A light, vaguely swaying,
+grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon it, lips
+just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped.  She
+looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him!  The
+selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could
+still feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what
+he wanted, though much, was not quite all that mattered.
+
+"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it
+dull.  But it's a pleasure to see you.  My little sweet's is the
+only face which gives me any pleasure, except yours."
+
+>From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be
+appreciated, and this reassured him.  "That's not humbug," he said.
+"I never told a woman I admired her when I didn't.  In fact I
+don't know when I've told a woman I admired her, except my wife in
+the old days; and wives are funny."  He was silent, but resumed
+abruptly:
+
+"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and
+there we were."  Her face looked  mysteriously troubled, and,
+afraid that he had said something painful, he hurried on: "When my
+little sweet marries, I hope she'll find someone who knows what
+women feel.  I shan't be here to see it, but there's too much
+topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her to pitch up against
+that."  And, aware that he had made bad worse, he added: "That dog
+will scratch."
+
+A silence followed.  Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature
+whose life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made
+for love?  Some day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find
+another mate--not so disorderly as that young fellow who had got
+himself run over.  Ah! but her husband?
+
+"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.  Her face had closed up  suddenly.  For all her
+softness there was something irreconcilable about her.  And a
+glimpse of light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies
+strayed into a brain which, belonging to early Victorian civil-
+isation--so much older than this of his old age--had never thought
+about such primitive things.
+
+"That's a comfort," he said.  "You can see the Grand Stand to-day.
+Shall we take a turn round?"
+
+Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls
+peach trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the
+stables, the vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the
+rosery, the summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen
+garden to see the tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of
+their pods with her finger, and lick up from the palm of her little
+brown hand.  Many delightful things he showed her, while Holly and
+the dog Balthasar danced ahead, or came to them at intervals for
+attention.  It was one of the happiest afternoons he had ever
+spent, but it tired him and he was glad to sit down in the music
+room and let her give him tea.  A special little friend of Holly's
+had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.  And the
+two sported in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and
+up in the gallery.  Old Jolyon begged for Chopin.  She played
+studies, mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near,
+stood at the foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent
+forward, listening.  Old Jolyon watched.
+
+"Let's see you dance, you two!"
+
+Shyly, with a false start, they began.  Bobbing and circling,
+earnest, not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the
+strains of that waltz.  He watched them and the face of her who was
+playing turned smiling towards those little dancers thinking:
+
+'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'
+
+A voice said:
+
+"Hollee! Mais enfin--quest-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!
+Viens, donc!"
+
+But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would
+save them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'
+
+"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle.  It's all my doing.
+Trot along, chicks, and have your tea."
+
+And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took
+every meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:
+
+"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones
+among your pupils?"
+
+"Yes, three--two of them darlings."
+
+"Pretty?"
+
+"Lovely!"
+
+Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very
+young.  "My little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be
+a musician some day.  You wouldn't give me your opinion of her
+playing, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her
+lessons."  The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him;
+yet it would mean that he would see her regularly.  She left the
+piano and came over to his chair.
+
+"I would like, very much; but there is--June.  When are they coming
+back?"
+
+Old Jolyon frowned.  "Not till the middle of next month.  What does
+that matter?"
+
+"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
+Jolyon."
+
+Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.
+
+But as if answering, Irene shook her head.  "You know she couldn't;
+one doesn't forget."
+
+Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed
+finality:
+
+"Well, we shall see."
+
+He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred
+little things, till the carriage came round to take her home.  And
+when she had gone he went back to his chair, and sat there
+smoothing his face and chin, dreaming over the day.
+
+That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of
+paper.  He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and
+stood under the masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'  He
+was not thinking of that picture, but of his life.  He was going to
+leave her something in his Will; nothing could so have stirred the
+stilly deeps of thought and memory.  He was going to leave her a
+portion of his wealth, of his aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--
+all that had made that wealth; going to leave her, too, a part of
+all he had missed in life, by his sane and steady pursuit of
+wealth.  All! What had he missed?  'Dutch Fishing Boats' responded
+blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing the curtain
+aside, opened it.  A wind had got up, and one of last year's oak
+leaves which had somehow survived the gardener's brooms, was
+dragging itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace
+in the twilight.  Except for that it was very quiet out there, and
+he could smell the heliotrope watered not long since.  A bat went
+by.  A bird uttered its last 'cheep.'  And right above the oak tree
+the first star shone.  Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for
+some fresh years of youth.  Morbid notion!  No such bargain was
+possible, that was real tragedy! No making oneself new again for
+love or life or anything.  Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from
+afar off while you could, and leave it something in your Will.  But
+how much? And, as if he could not make that calculation looking out
+into the mild freedom of the country night, he turned back and went
+up to the chimney-piece.  There were his pet bronzes--a Cleopatra
+with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a greyhound playing with
+her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.  'They last!' he
+thought, and a pang went through his heart.  They had a thousand
+years of life before them!
+
+'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old
+before her time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as
+possible, and grey from soiling that bright hair.  He might live
+another five years.  She would be well over thirty by then.  'How
+much?'  She had none of his blood in her!  In loyalty to the tenor
+of his life for forty years and more, ever since he married and
+founded that mysterious thing, a family, came this warning thought-
+-None of his blood, no right to anything!  It was a luxury then,
+this notion.  An extravagance, a petting of an old man's whim, one
+of those things done in dotage.  His real future was vested in
+those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was gone.
+He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
+leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of
+cigars.  And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her
+grey dress, fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him.
+Why! She cared nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that
+lost lover of hers.  But she was there, whether she would or no,
+giving him pleasure with her beauty and grace.  One had no right to
+inflict an old man's company, no right to ask her down to play to
+him and let him look at her--for no reward!  Pleasure must be paid
+for in this world.  'How much?'  After all, there was plenty; his
+son and his three grandchildren would never miss that little lump.
+He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he could leave it where
+he liked, allow himself this little pleasure.  He went back to the
+bureau.  'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them think what
+they like.  I'm going to!'  And he sat down.
+
+'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with
+his money he could buy one year, one month of youth.  And startled
+by that thought, he wrote quickly:
+
+
+'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my
+niece Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes,
+fifteen thousand pounds free of legacy duty."
+'Yours faithfully,
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the
+window and drew in a long breath.  It was dark, but many stars
+shone now.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught
+him brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts.  Experience had
+also taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight
+showed the folly of such panic.  On this particular morning the
+thought which gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at
+his age not improbable, he would not see her.  From this it was but
+a step to realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son
+and June returned from Spain.  How could he justify desire for the
+company of one who had stolen--early morning does not mince words--
+June's lover?  That lover was dead; but June was a stubborn little
+thing; warm-hearted, but stubborn as wood, and--quite true--not one
+who forgot!  By the middle of next month they would be back.  He
+had barely five weeks left to enjoy the new interest which had come
+into what remained of his life.  Darkness showed up to him absurdly
+clear the nature of his feeling.  Admiration for beauty--a craving
+to see that which delighted his eyes.
+
+Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for
+asking June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his
+son and his son's wife from thinking him very queer?  He would be
+reduced to sneaking up to London, which tired him; and the least
+indisposition would cut him off even from that.  He lay with eyes
+open, setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself an
+old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop
+beating altogether.  He had seen the dawn lighting the window
+chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow,
+before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane.  Five weeks
+before he need bother, at his age an eternity!  But that early
+morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of
+one who had always had his own way.  He would see her as often as
+he wished!  Why not go up to town and make that codicil at his
+solicitor's instead of writing about it; she might like to go to
+the opera!  But, by train, for he would not have that fat chap
+Beacon grinning behind his back.  Servants were such fools; and, as
+likely as not, they had known all the past history of Irene and
+young Bosinney--servants knew everything, and suspected the rest.
+He wrote to her that morning:
+
+
+"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow.  If you would
+like to have a look in at the opera, come and dine with me quietly
+...."
+
+But where?  It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London
+save at his Club or at a private house.  Ah! that new-fangled place
+close to Covent Garden....
+
+"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether
+to expect you there at 7 o'clock."
+"Yours affectionately,
+"JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+
+She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little
+pleasure; for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to
+see her was instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that
+one so old should go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a
+woman.
+
+The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his
+lawyer's, tired him.  It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner
+he lay down on the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little.  He must
+have had a sort of fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling
+very queer; and with some difficulty rose and rang the bell.  Why!
+it was past seven!  And there he was and she would be waiting.  But
+suddenly the dizziness came on again, and he was obliged to relapse
+on the sofa.  He heard the maid's voice say:
+
+"Did you ring, sir?"
+
+"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in
+front of his eyes.  "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."
+
+"Yes, sir."  Her voice sounded frightened.
+
+Old Jolyon made an effort.
+
+"Don't go.  Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the
+hall--a lady in grey.  Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat.  He
+is very sorry; if he is not down directly, she is not to wait
+dinner."
+
+When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in
+grey--she may be in anything.  Sal volatile!'  He did not go off
+again, yet was not conscious of how Irene came to be standing
+beside him, holding smelling salts to his nose, and pushing a
+pillow up behind his head.  He heard her say anxiously: "Dear Uncle
+Jolyon, what is it?" was dimly conscious of the soft pressure of
+her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of smelling salts,
+suddenly discovered strength in them, and sneezed.
+
+"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing.  How did you get here? Go down and
+dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table.  I shall be all right
+in a minute."
+
+He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat
+divided between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all
+right.
+
+"Why! You are in grey!" he said.  "Help me up."  Once on his feet
+he gave himself a shake.
+
+"What business had I to go off like that!"  And he moved very
+slowly to the glass.  What a cadaverous chap!  Her voice, behind
+him, murmured:
+
+"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!  A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights.  I
+can't have you missing the opera."
+
+But the journey down the corridor was troublesome.  What carpets
+they had in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up
+in them at every step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she
+looked, and said with the ghost of a twinkle:
+
+"I'm a pretty host."
+
+When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent
+its slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he
+felt much better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought
+such solicitude into her manner towards him.
+
+"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and
+watching the smile in her eyes, went on:
+
+"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life;
+plenty of that when you get to my age.  That's a nice dress--I like
+the style."
+
+"I made it myself."
+
+Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her
+interest in life.
+
+"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up.  I
+want to see some colour in your cheeks.  We mustn't waste life; it
+doesn't do.  There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she
+won't be fat.  And Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap
+playing the Devil I can't imagine."
+
+But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from
+dinner the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his
+staying quiet and going to bed early.  When he parted from her at
+the door of the hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to
+Chelsea, he sat down again for a moment to enjoy the memory of her
+words: "You are such a darling to me, Uncle Jolyon!"  Why! Who
+wouldn't be!  He would have liked to stay up another day and take
+her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would bore her to
+death.  No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised to come
+then.  They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a
+month.  It would be something.  That little Mam'zelle Beauce
+wouldn't like it, but she would have to lump it.  And crushing his
+old opera hat against his chest he sought the lift.
+
+He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:
+'Drive me to Chelsea.'  But his sense of proportion was too strong.
+Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another
+aberration like that of last night, away from home.  Holly, too,
+was expecting him, and what he had in his bag for her.  Not that
+there was any cupboard love in his little sweet--she was a bundle
+of affection.  Then, with the rather bitter cynicism of the old, he
+wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard love which made
+Irene put up with him.  No, she was not that sort either.  She had,
+if anything, too little notion of how to butter her bread, no sense
+of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not breathed a word about
+that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the day was the good
+thereof.
+
+In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining
+the dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home.
+All the rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was
+content and peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long
+lingering sunshine showered gold on the lawns and the flowers.  But
+on Thursday evening at his lonely dinner he began to count the
+hours; sixty-five till he would go down to meet her again in the
+little coppice, and walk up through the fields at her side.  He had
+intended to consult the doctor about his fainting fit, but the
+fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no excitement and all
+that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did not want to be
+told of an infirmity--if there were one, could not afford to hear
+of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.
+And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to
+his son.  It would only bring them back with a run!  How far this
+silence was due to consideration for their pleasure, how far to
+regard for his own, he did not pause to consider.
+
+That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was
+dozing off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious
+of a scent of violets.  Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in
+grey, standing by the fireplace, holding out her arms.  The odd
+thing was that, though those arms seemed to hold nothing, they were
+curved as if round someone's neck, and her own neck was bent back,
+her lips open, her eyes closed.  She vanished at once, and there
+were the mantelpiece and his bronzes.  But those bronzes and the
+mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only the fireplace and
+the wall!  Shaken and troubled, he got up.  'I must take medicine,'
+he thought; 'I can't be well.'  His heart beat too fast, he had an
+asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he opened
+it to get some air.  A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs at
+Gage's farm no doubt, beyond the coppice.  A beautiful still night,
+but dark.  'I dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it!  And yet I'll
+swear my eyes were open!'  A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.
+
+"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"
+
+Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he
+stepped out on the terrace.  Something soft scurried by in the
+dark.  "Shoo!"  It was that great grey cat.  'Young Bosinney was
+like a great cat!' he thought.  'It was him in there, that she--
+that she was--He's got her still!'  He walked to the edge of the
+terrace, and looked down into the darkness; he could just see the
+powdering of the daisies on the unmown lawn.  Here to-day and gone
+to-morrow!  And there came the moon, who saw all, young and old,
+alive and dead, and didn't care a dump!  His own turn soon.  For a
+single day of youth he would give what was left!  And he turned
+again towards the house.  He could see the windows of the night
+nursery up there.  His little sweet would be asleep.  'Hope that
+dog won't wake her!' he thought.  'What is it makes us love, and
+makes us die!  I must go to bed.'
+
+And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he
+passed back within.
+
+How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his
+well-spent past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating
+warmth, only pale winter sunshine.  The shell can withstand the
+gentle beating of the dynamos of memory.  The present he should
+distrust; the future shun.  From beneath thick shade he should
+watch the sunlight creeping at his toes.  If there be sun of
+summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking it for the
+Indian-summer sun!  Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,
+slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his
+wind-pipe and he gasps away to death some early morning before the
+world is aired, and they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of
+years!' yea!  If he preserve his principles in perfect order, a
+Forsyte may live on long after he is dead.
+
+Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that
+which transcended Forsyteism.  For it is written that a Forsyte
+shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than
+his own health.  And something beat within him in these days that
+with each throb fretted at the thinning shell.  His sagacity knew
+this, but it knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor
+would if he could.  And yet, if you had told him he was living on
+his capital, he would have stared you down.  No, no; a man did not
+live on his capital; it was not done!  The shibboleths of the past
+are ever more real than the actualities of the present.  And he, to
+whom living on one's capital had always been anathema, could not
+have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his own case.
+Pleasure is healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the
+youth of the young--and what else on earth was he doing!
+
+Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now
+arranged his time.  On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train;
+Irene came and dined with him.  And they went to the opera.  On
+Thursdays he drove to town, and, putting that fat chap and his
+horses up, met her in Kensington Gardens, picking up the carriage
+after he had left her, and driving home again in time for dinner.
+He threw out the casual formula that he had business in London on
+those two days.  On Wednesdays and Saturdays she came down to give
+Holly music lessons.  The greater the pleasure he took in her
+society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a matter-
+of-fact and friendly uncle.  Not even in feeling, really, was he
+more--for, after all, there was his age.  And yet, if she were late
+he fidgeted himself to death.  If she missed coming, which happened
+twice, his eyes grew sad as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.
+
+And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his
+heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof.  Who could have
+believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his
+son's and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread!
+There was such a delicious freedom, such recovery of that
+independence a man enjoys before he founds a family, about these
+weeks of lovely weather, and this new companionship with one who
+demanded nothing, and remained always a little unknown, retaining
+the fascination of mystery.  It was like a draught of wine to him
+who has been drinking water for so long that he has almost
+forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to his
+brain.  The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and
+the sunlight had a living value--were no longer mere reminders of
+past enjoy-ment.  There was something now to live for which stirred
+him continually to anticipation.  He lived in that, not in
+retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as he.
+The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one
+naturally abstemious, had lost all value.  He ate little, without
+knowing what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to
+look at.  He was again a 'threadpaper'; and to this thinned form
+his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more
+dignity than ever.  He was very well aware that he ought to see the
+doctor, but liberty was too sweet.  He could not afford to pet his
+frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the
+expense of liberty.  Return to the vegetable existence he had led
+among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels,
+before this new attraction came into his life--no! He exceeded his
+allowance of cigars.  Two a day had always been his rule.  Now he
+smoked three and sometimes four--a man will when he is filled with
+the creative spirit.  But very often he thought: 'I must give up
+smoking, and coffee; I must give up rattling up to town.'  But he
+did not; there was no one in any sort of authority to notice him,
+and this was a priceless boon.
+
+The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb.
+Mam'zelle Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too
+'wellbrrred' to make personal allusions.  Holly had not as yet an
+eye for the relative appearance of him who was her plaything and
+her god.  It was left for Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to
+rest in the hot part of the day, to take a tonic, and so forth.
+But she did not tell him that she was the a cause of his thinness--
+for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working.  A man of eighty-
+five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces passion works
+on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which crave the sight
+of Her.
+
+On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter
+from his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday.
+This had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic
+improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he
+had never quite admitted it.  Now he did, and something would have
+to be done.  He had ceased to be able to imagine life without this
+new interest, but that which is not imagined sometimes exists, as
+Forsytes are perpetually finding to their cost.  He sat in his old
+leather chair, doubling up the letter, and mumbling with his lips
+the end of an unlighted cigar.  After to-morrow his Tuesday
+expeditions to town would have to be abandoned.  He could still
+drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his man of
+business.  But even that would be dependent on his health, for now
+they would begin to fuss about him.  The lessons!  The lessons must
+go on!  She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her
+feelings in her pocket.  She had done so once, on the day after the
+news of Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely
+do again now.  Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--
+not Christian to keep the memory of old sores alive.  June's will
+was strong, but his was stronger, for his sands were running out.
+Irene was soft, surely she would do this for him, subdue her
+natural shrinking, sooner than give him pain!  The lessons must
+continue; for if they did, he was secure.  And lighting his cigar
+at last, he began trying to shape out how to put it to them all,
+and explain this strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away
+from the naked truth--that he could not bear to be deprived of the
+sight of beauty.  Ah! Holly!  Holly was fond of her, Holly liked
+her lessons.  She would save him--his little sweet!  And with that
+happy thought he became serene, and wondered what he had been
+worrying about so fearfully.  He must not worry, it left him always
+curiously weak, and as if but half present in his own body.
+
+That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though
+he did not faint.  He would not ring the bell, because he knew it
+would mean a fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more
+conspicuous.  When one grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy
+to limit freedom, and for what reason?--just to keep the breath in
+him a little longer.  He did not want it at such cost.  Only the
+dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery from that weakness; anxiously
+watched his master go to the sideboard and drink some brandy,
+instead of giving him a biscuit.  When at last old Jolyon felt able
+to tackle the stairs he went up to bed.  And, though still shaky
+next morning, the thought of the evening sustained and strengthened
+him.  It was always such a pleasure to give her a good dinner--he
+suspected her of undereating when she was alone; and, at the opera
+to watch her eyes glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her
+lips.  She hadn't much pleasure, and this was the last time he
+would be able to give her that treat.  But when he was packing his
+bag he caught himself wishing that he had not the fatigue of
+dressing for dinner before him, and the exertion, too, of telling
+her about June's return.
+
+The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last
+entr'acte to break the news, instinctively putting it off till the
+latest moment.
+
+She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had
+taken it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence
+became necessary.  The mask was down over her face, that mask
+behind which so much went on that he could not see.  She wanted
+time to think it over, no doubt!  He would not press her, for she
+would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow afternoon, and he
+should see her then when she had got used to the idea.  In the cab
+he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old days,
+but this one was not bad at all.  When he took her hand to say
+good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.
+
+"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."
+
+"To-morrow then," he said.  "Good-night.  Sleep well."  She echoed
+softly: "Sleep welll" and from the cab window, already moving away,
+he saw her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in
+a gesture which seemed to linger.
+
+He sought his room slowly.  They never gave him the same, and he
+could not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new
+furniture and grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink
+roses.  He was wakeful and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in
+his head.
+
+His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he
+knew, if it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable.
+Well, there was in life something which upset all your care and
+plans--something which made men and women dance to its pipes.  And
+he lay staring from deep-sunk eyes into the darkness where the
+unaccountable held sway.  You thought you had hold of life, but it
+slipped away behind you, took you by the scruff of the neck, forced
+you here and forced you there, and then, likely as not, squeezed
+life out of you!  It took the very stars like that, he shouldn't
+wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them apart; it had
+never done playing its pranks.  Five million people in this great
+blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that Life-
+Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board
+when you struck your fist on it.  Ah, well! Himself would not hop
+much longer--a good long sleep would do him good!
+
+How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had
+kissed it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had
+known the very place and wanted to kiss it all away for him.  But,
+instead, her lips left a patch of grievous uneasiness.  She had
+never spoken in quite that voice, had never before made that
+lingering gesture or looked back at him as she drove away.
+
+He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced
+down over the river.  There was little air, but the sight of that
+breadth of water flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him.  'The
+great thing,' he thought 'is not to make myself a nuisance.  I'll
+think of my little sweet, and go to sleep.'  But it was long before
+the heat and throbbing of the London night died out into the short
+slumber of the summer morning.  And old Jolyon had but forty winks.
+
+When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and
+with the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers,
+gathered a great bunch of carnations.  They were, he told her, for
+'the lady in grey'--a name still bandied between them; and he put
+them in a bowl in his study where he meant to tackle Irene the
+moment she came, on the subject of June and future lessons.  Their
+fragrance and colour would help.  After lunch he lay down, for he
+felt very tired, and the carriage would not bring her from the
+station till four o'clock.  But as the hour approached he grew
+restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.
+The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle
+Beauce, sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending
+to their silkworms.  Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these
+methodical creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of
+elephants; who nibbled such quantities of holes in nice green
+leaves; and smelled, as he thought, horrid.  He sat down on a
+chintz-covered windowseat whence he could see the drive, and get
+what air there was; and the dog Balthasar who appreciated chintz on
+hot days, jumped up beside him.  Over the cottage piano a violet
+dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and on it the first
+lavender, whose scent filled the room.  In spite of the coolness
+here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life vehemently
+impressed his ebbed-down senses.  Each sunbeam which came through
+the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong;
+the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up
+their grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head
+bent over them had a wonderfully silky sheen.  A marvellous cruelly
+strong thing was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock
+you with its multitude of forms and its beating vitality.  He had
+never, till those last few weeks, had this curious feeling of being
+with one half of him eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and
+with the other half left on the bank, watching that helpless
+progress.  Only when Irene was with him did he lose this double
+consciousness.
+
+Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
+piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said
+slyly:
+
+"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"
+
+Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was
+clouded; then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:
+
+"Who's been dressing her up?"
+
+"Mam'zelle."
+
+"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"
+
+That prim little Frenchwoman!  She hadn't yet got over the music
+lessons being taken away from her.  That wouldn't help.  His little
+sweet was the only friend they had.  Well, they were her lessons.
+And he shouldn't budge shouldn't budge for anything.  He stroked
+the warm wool on Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When
+mother's home, there won't be any changes, will there?  She doesn't
+like strangers, you know."
+
+The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of
+opposition about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his
+new-found freedom.  Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an
+old man at the mercy of care and love, or fight to keep this new
+and prized companionship; and to fight tired him to death.  But his
+thin, worn face hardened into resolution till it appeared all Jaw.
+This was his house, and his affair; he should not budge!  He looked
+at his watch, old and thin like himself; he had owned it fifty
+years.  Past four already!  And kissing the top of Holly's head in
+passing, he went down to the hall.  He wanted to get hold of her
+before she went up to give her lesson.  At the first sound of
+wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the
+victoria was empty.
+
+"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."
+
+Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push
+away that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter
+disappointment he was feeling.
+
+"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house.  He went to
+his study and sat down, quivering like a leaf.  What did this mean?
+She might have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't.
+'Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon.'  Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-
+night'?  And that hand of hers lingering in the air.  And her kiss.
+What did it mean?  Vehement alarm and irritation took possession of
+him.  He got up and began to pace the Turkey carpet, between window
+and wall.  She was going to give him up!  He felt it for certain--
+and he defenceless.  An old man wanting to look on beauty!  It was
+ridiculous!  Age closed his mouth, paralysed his power to fight.
+He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to anything
+but memories and sorrow.  He could not plead with her; even an old
+man has his dignity.  Defenceless!  For an hour, lost to bodily
+fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had
+plucked, which mocked him with its scent.  Of all things hard to
+bear, the prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has
+always had his way.  Nature had got him in its net, and like an
+unhappy fish he turned and swam at the meshes, here and there,
+found no hole, no breaking point.  They brought him tea at five
+o'clock, and a letter.  For a moment hope beat up in him.  He cut
+the envelope with the butter knife, and read:
+
+
+"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
+disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night.  I
+feel I can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that
+June is coming back.  Some things go too deep to be forgotten.  It
+has been such a joy to see you and Holly.  Perhaps I shall still
+see you sometimes when you come up, though I'm sure it's not good
+for you; I can see you are tiring yourself too much.  I believe you
+ought to rest quite quietly all this hot weather, and now you have
+your son and June coming back you will be so happy.  Thank you a
+million times for all your sweetness to me.
+
+"Lovingly your IRENE."
+
+
+So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he
+chiefly cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end
+of all things, the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling
+footsteps.  Not good for him!  Not even she could see how she was
+his new lease of interest in life, the incarnation of all the
+beauty he felt slipping from him.
+
+His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he
+paced, torn between his dignity and his hold on life.  Intolerable
+to be squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on
+when your will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to
+the ground with care and love.  Intolerable!  He would see what
+telling her the truth would do--the truth that he wanted the sight
+of her more than just a lingering on.  He sat down at his old
+bureau and took a pen.  But he could not write.  There was some-
+thing revolting in having to plead like this; plead that she should
+warm his eyes with her beauty.  It was tantamount to confessing
+dotage.  He simply could not.  And instead, he wrote:
+
+
+"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to
+stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my
+little grand-daughter.  But old men learn to forego their whims;
+they are obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner
+or later; and perhaps the sooner the better.
+"My love to you,
+"JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+
+'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it.  I'm tired.'  He sealed
+and dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it
+fall to the bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward
+to!'
+
+That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his
+cigar which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went
+very slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery.  He sat down
+on the window-seat.  A night-light was burning, and he could just
+see Holly's face, with one hand underneath the cheek.  An early
+cockchafer buzzed in the Japanese paper with which they had filled
+the grate, and one of the horses in the stable stamped restlessly.
+To sleep like that child!  He pressed apart two rungs of the
+venetian blind and looked out.  The moon was rising, blood-red.  He
+had never seen so red a moon.  The woods and fields out there were
+dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the summer light.
+And beauty, like a spirit, walked.  'I've had a long life,' he
+thought, 'the best of nearly everything.  I'm an ungrateful chap;
+I've seen a lot of beauty in my time.  Poor young Bosinney said I
+had a sense of beauty.  There's a man in the moon to-night!'  A
+moth went by, another, another.  'Ladies in grey!'  He closed his
+eyes.  A feeling that he would never open them again beset him; he
+let it grow, let himself sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the
+lids up.  There was something wrong with him, no doubt, deeply
+wrong; he would have to have the doctor after all.  It didn't much
+matter now!  Into that coppice the moon-light would have crept;
+there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the only things
+awake.  No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the shadows--
+moving; 'Ladies in grey!'  Over that log they would climb; would
+whisper together.  She and Bosinney!  Funny thought!  And the frogs
+and little things would whisper too!  How the clock ticked, in
+here!  It was all eerie-out there in the light of that red moon; in
+here with the little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and
+the nurse's dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen,
+tall, like a woman's figure.  'Lady in grey!'  And a very odd
+thought beset him: Did she exist?  Had she ever come at all?  Or
+was she but the emanation of all the beauty he had loved and must
+leave so soon?  The violet-grey spirit with the dark eyes and the
+crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and the moonlight, and at
+blue-bell time?  What was she, who was she, did she exist?  He rose
+and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him a sense
+of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door.  He
+stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his
+eyes fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in
+defence.  He tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage;
+reached his room, undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in
+his night-shirt.  What a scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and
+thin legs! His eyes resisted his own image, and a look of pride
+came on his face.  All was in league to pull him down, even his
+reflection in the glass, but he was not down--yet!  He got into
+bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying to reach
+resignation, only too well aware that fretting and disappointment
+were very bad for him.  He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and
+strengthIess that he sent for the doctor.  After sounding him, the
+fellow pulled a face as long as your arm, and ordered him to stay
+in bed and give up smoking.  That was no hardship; there was
+nothing to get up for, and when he felt ill, tobacco always lost
+its savour.  He spent the morning languidly with the sun-blinds
+down, turning and re-turning The Times, not reading much, the dog
+Balthasar lying beside his bed.  With his lunch they brought him a
+telegram, running thus:
+
+
+'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you
+at four-thirty.  Irene.'
+
+
+Coming down!  After all!  Then she did exist--and he was not
+deserted.  Coming down!  A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks
+and forehead felt hot.  He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-
+table away, lying very quiet until they had removed lunch and left
+him alone; but every now and then his eyes twinkled.  Coming down!
+His heart beat fast, and then did not seem to beat at all.  At
+three o'clock he got up and dressed deliberately, noiselessly.
+Holly and Mam'zelle would be in the schoolroom, and the servants
+asleep after their dinner, he shouldn't wonder.  He opened his door
+cautiously, and went downstairs.  In the hall the dog Balthasar lay
+solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed into his study
+and out into the burning afternoon.  He meant to go down and meet
+her in the coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in
+this heat.  He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing,
+and the dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him.
+He sat there smiling.  What a revel of bright minutes!  What a hum
+of insects, and cooing of pigeons!  It was the quintessence of a
+summer day.  Lovely!  And he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, what-
+ever that might be.  She was coming; she had not given him up!  He
+had everything in life he wanted--except a little more breath, and
+less weight--just here!  He would see her when she emerged from the
+fernery, come swaying just a little, a violet-grey figure passing
+over the daisies and dandelions and 'soldiers' on the lawn--the
+soldiers with their flowery crowns.  He would not move, but she
+would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am sorry!' and
+sit in the swing and let him look at her and tell her that he had
+not been very well but was all right now; and that dog would lick
+her hand.  That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a
+good dog.
+
+It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him,
+only make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the
+Grand Stand at Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows crop-
+ping the clover in the field and swishing at the flies with their
+tails.  He smelled the scent of limes, and lavender.  Ah!  that was
+why there was such a racket of bees.  They were excited--busy, as
+his heart was busy and excited.  Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on
+honey and happiness; as his heart was drugged and drowsy.  Summer--
+summer--they seemed saying; great bees and little bees, and the
+flies too!
+
+The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here.
+He would have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep
+of late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and
+beauty, coming towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey!
+And settling back in his chair he closed his eyes.  Some thistle-
+down came on what little air there was, and pitched on his
+moustache more white than itself.  He did not know; but his
+breathing stirred it, caught there.  A ray of sunlight struck
+through and lodged on his boot.  A bumble-bee alighted and strolled
+on the crown of his Panama hat.  And the delicious surge of slumber
+reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward and
+rested on his breast.  Summer--summer!  So went the hum.
+
+The stable clock struck the quarter past.  The dog Balthasar
+stretched and looked up at his master.  The thistledown no longer
+moved.  The dog placed his chin over the sunlit foot.  It did not
+stir.  The dog withdrew his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old
+Jolyon's lap, looked in his face, whined; then, leaping down, sat
+on his haunches, gazing up.  And suddenly he uttered a long, long
+howl.
+
+But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old
+master.
+
+Summer--summer--summer!  The soundless footsteps on the grass!
+
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN CHANCERY
+
+Two households both alike in dignity,
+>From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny.
+
+---Romeo and Juliet
+
+
+
+TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD
+
+
+
+
+
+PART 1
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AT TIMOTHY'S
+
+
+The possessive instinct never stands still.  Through florescence
+and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression
+even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever.
+Nor can it be dissociated from environment any more than the
+quality of potato from the soil.
+
+The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his
+good time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from self-
+contented and contained provincialism to still more self-contented
+if less contained imperialism--in other words, the 'possessive'
+instinct of the nation on the move.  And so, as if in conformity,
+was it with the Forsyte family.  They were spreading not merely on
+the surface, but within.
+
+When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed
+her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was
+cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes
+left.  For this apathy there were three causes.  First: the almost
+surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill--
+first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at Highgate.  That
+burial, coming a year after Swithin's entirely proper funeral, had
+occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte 'Change, the abode of
+Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road, London, which still col-
+lected and radiated family gossip.  Opinions ranged from the
+lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of Francie
+that it was 'a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate
+business.'  Uncle Jolyon in his later years--indeed, ever since the
+strangeand lamentable affair between his granddaughter June's
+lover, young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte's wife-
+-had noticeably rapped the family's knuckles; and that way of his
+own which he had always taken had begun to seem to them a little
+wayward.  The philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been
+too liable to crop out of the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they
+were in a way prepared for his interment in a strange spot.  But
+the whole thing was an odd business, and when the contents of his
+Will became current coin on Forsyte 'Change, a shiver had gone
+round the clan.  Out of his estate (L145,304 gross, with
+liabilities L35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left L15,000 to "whomever
+do you think, my dear?  To Irene!" that runaway wife of his nephew
+Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family, and--
+still more amazing was to him no blood relation.  Not out and out,
+of course; only a life interest--only the income from it!  Still,
+there it was; and old Jolyon's claim to be the perfect Forsyte was
+ended once for all.  That, then, was the first reason why the
+burial of Susan Hayman--at Woking--made little stir.  The second
+reason was altogether more expansive and imperial.  Besides the
+house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by Hayman when
+he died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman boys had
+learned to be such good shots and riders, as it was believed, which
+was of course nice for them, and creditable to everybody; and the
+fact of owning something really countrified seemed somehow to
+excuse the dispersion of her remains--though what could have put
+cremation into her head they could not think!  The usual
+invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had gone down and
+young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite satisfactory so far as
+it went, for she had only had a life interest; and everything had
+gone quite smoothly to the children in equal shares.
+
+The third reason why Susan's burial made little stir was the most
+expansive of all.  It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the pale,
+the thin: "Well, I think people have a right to their own bodies,
+even when they're dead."  Coming from a daughter of Nicholas, a
+Liberal of the old school and most tyrannical, it was a startling
+remark--showing in a flash what a lot of water had run under
+bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in '86, just when the
+proprietorship of Soames over his wife's body was acquiring the
+uncertainty which had led to such disaster.  Euphemia, of course,
+spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over
+thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte.  But, making all
+allowances, her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the
+principle of liberty, decentralisation and shift in the central
+point of possession from others to oneself.  When Nicholas heard
+his daughter's remark from Aunt Hester he had rapped out: "Wives
+and daughters!  There's no end to their liberty in these days.  I
+knew that 'Jackson' case would lead to things--lugging in Habeas
+Corpus like that!"  He had, of course, never really forgiven the
+Married Woman's Property Act, which would so have interfered with
+him if he--had not mercifully married before it was passed.  But,
+in truth, there was no denying the revolt among the younger
+Forsytes against being owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial
+disposition to own oneself, which is the paradoxical forerunner of
+Imperialism, was making progress all the time.  They were all now
+married, except George, confirmed to the Turf and the Iseeum Club;
+Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio off the King's
+Road, Chelsea, and still taking 'lovers' to dances; Euphemia,
+living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two Dromios,
+Giles and Jesse Hayman.  Of the third generation there were not
+very many--young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young
+Nicholas six already, young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one;
+St. John Hayman two.  But the rest of the sixteen married--Soames,
+Rachel and Cicely of James' family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger's;
+Ernest, Archibald and Florence of Nicholas'; Augustus and Annabel
+Spender of the Hayman's--were going down the years unreproduced.
+
+Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been
+born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only
+seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there
+would be more than a further unconsidered trifle or so.  A student
+of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in
+accordance with the rate of interest for your money.  Grandfather
+'Superior Dosset' Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had been
+getting ten per cent. for his, hence ten children.  Those ten,
+leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose husband
+Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once, had averaged
+from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced accordingly.
+The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting barely three per
+cent. in the Consols to which their father had mostly tied the
+Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them
+who had been reproduced had seventeen children, or just the proper
+two and five-sixths per stem.
+
+There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction.  A
+distrust of their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency is
+guaranteed, together with the knowledge that their fathers did not
+die, kept them cautious.  If one had children and not much income,
+the standard of taste and comfort must of necessity go down; what
+was enough for two was not enough for four, and so on-it would be
+better to wait and see what Father did.  Besides, it was nice to be
+able to take holidays unhampered.  Sooner in fact than own
+children, they preferred to concentrate on the ownership of them-
+selves, conforming to the growing tendency fin de siecle, as it
+was called.  In this way, little risk was run, and one would be
+able to have a motor-car.  Indeed, Eustace already had one, but it
+had shaken him horribly, and broken one of his eye teeth; so that
+it would be better to wait till they were a little safer.  In the
+meantime, no more children!  Even young Nicholas was drawing in his
+horns, and had made no addition to his six for quite three years.
+
+The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion
+rather, of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so far
+as to prevent a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899.  It had been
+a glorious summer, and after holidays abroad and at the sea they
+were practically all back in London, when Roger with a touch of his
+old originality had suddenly breathed his last at his own house in
+Princes Gardens.  At Timothy's it was whispered sadly that poor
+Roger had always been eccentric about his digestion--had he not,
+for instance, preferred German mutton to all the other brands?  Be
+that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and
+coming away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for his
+Uncle Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.  The 'Old Things'--Aunt
+Juley and Aunt Hester--would like to hear about.  it.  His father--
+James--at  eighty-eight had not felt up to the fatigue of the
+funeral; and Timothy himself, of course, had not gone; so that
+Nicholas had been the only brother present.  Still, there had been
+a fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley and Hester up to
+know.  The kindly thought was not unmixed with the inevitable
+longing to get something out of everything you do, which is the
+chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the saner elements
+in every nation.  In this practice of taking family matters to
+Timothy's in the Bayswater Road, Soames was but following in the
+footsteps of his father, who had been in the habit of going at
+least once a week to see his sisters at Timothy's, and had only
+given it up when he lost his nerve at eighty-six, and could not go
+out without Emily.  To go with Emily was of no use, for who could
+really talk to anyone in the presence of his own wife?  Like James
+in the old days, Soames found time to go there nearly every Sunday,
+and sit in the little drawing-room into which, with his undoubted
+taste, he had introduced a good deal of change and china not quite
+up to his own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful
+Barbizon pictures, at Christmastides.  He himself, who had done
+extremely well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved
+towards the Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do
+better.  In the riverside house which he now inhabited near
+Mapledurham he had a gallery, beautifully hung and lighted, to
+which few London dealers were strangers.  It served, too, as a
+Sunday afternoon attraction in those week-end parties which his
+sisters, Winifred or Rachel, occasionally organised for him.  For
+though he was but a taciturn showman, his quiet collected
+determinism seldom failed to influence his guests, who knew that
+his reputation was grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his
+power of gauging the future of market values.  When he went to
+Timothy's he almost always had some little tale of triumph over a
+dealer to unfold, and dearly he loved that coo of pride with which
+his aunts would greet it.  This afternoon, however, he was
+differently animated, coming from Roger's funeral in his neat dark
+clothes--not quite black, for after all an uncle was but an uncle,
+and his soul abhorred excessive display of feeling.  Leaning back
+in a marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted, nose at the
+sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably
+silent.  Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the
+peculiar Forsyte build of his face was seen to the best advantage
+this afternoon--a face concave and long, with a jaw which divested
+of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face
+though not at all ill-looking.  He was feeling more strongly than
+ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of
+his aunts dismally mid-Victorian.  The subject on which alone he
+wanted to talk--his own undivorced position--was unspeakable.  And
+yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else.  It was only
+since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown up
+which was egging him on towards what he knew might well be folly in
+a Forsyte of forty-five.  More and more of late he had been
+conscious that he was 'getting on.'  The fortune already
+considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had
+finally wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with
+surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during which he had
+devoted himself to little else.  He was worth to-day well over a
+hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to--no real
+object for going on with what was his religion.  Even if he were to
+relax his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would have
+a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where he was.  There
+had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side to
+Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now
+had crept out again in this his 'prime of life.'  Concreted and
+focussed of late by the attraction of a girl's undoubted beauty, it
+had become a veritable prepossession.  And this girl was French,
+not likely to lose her head, or accept any unlegalised position.
+Moreover, Soames himself disliked the thought of that.  He had
+tasted of the sordid side of sex during those long years of forced
+celibacy, secretively, and always with disgust, for he was
+fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate.  He wanted no
+hole and corner liaison.  A marriage at the Embassy in Paris, a few
+months' travel, and he could bring Annette back quite separated
+from a past which in truth was not too distinguished, for she only
+kept the accounts in her mother's Soho Restaurant; he could bring
+her back as something very new and chic with her French taste and
+self-possession, to reign at 'The Shelter' near Mapledurham.  On
+Forsyte 'Change and among his riverside friends it would be current
+that he had met a charming French girl on his travels and married
+her.  There would be the flavour of romance, and a certain cachet
+about a French wife.  No! He was not at all afraid of that.  It was
+only this cursed undivorced condition of his, and--and the question
+whether Annette would take him, which he dared not put to the touch
+until he had a clear and even dazzling future to offer her.
+
+In his aunts' drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those
+usual questions: How was his dear father?  Not going out, of
+course, now that the weather was turning chilly?  Would Soames be
+sure to tell him that Hester had found boiled holly leaves most
+comforting for that pain in her side; a poultice every three hours,
+with red flannel afterwards.  And could he relish just a little pot
+of their very best prune preserve it was so delicious this year,
+and had such a wonderful effect.  Oh! and about the Darties--had
+Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most distressing time
+with Montague?  Timothy thought she really ought to have protect-
+ion.  It was said--but Soames mustn't take this for certain--that
+he had given some of Winifred's jewellery to a dreadful dancer.  It
+was such a bad example for dear Val just as he was going to
+college.  Soames had not heard?  Oh, but he must go and see his
+sister and look into it at once!  And did he think these Boers were
+really going to resist?  Timothy was in quite a stew about it.  The
+price of Consols was so high, and he had such a lot of money in
+them.  Did Soames think they must go down if there was a war?
+Soames nodded.  But it would be over very quickly.  It would be so
+bad for Timothy if it wasn't.  And of course Soames' dear father
+would feel it very much at his age.  Luckily poor dear Roger had
+been spared this dreadful anxiety.  And Aunt Juley with a little
+handkerchief wiped away the large tear trying to climb the
+permanent pout on her now quite withered left cheek; she was
+remembering dear Roger, and all his originality, and how he used to
+stick pins into her when they were little together.  Aunt Hester,
+with her instinct for avoiding the unpleasant, here chimed in: Did
+Soames think they would make Mr. Chamberlain Prime Minister at
+once?  He would settle it all so quickly.  She would like to see
+that old Kruger sent to St. Helena.  She could remember so well the
+news of Napoleon's death, and what a, relief it had been to his
+grandfather.  Of course she and Juley..." We were in pantalettes
+then, my dear"--had not felt it much at the time.
+
+Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate three
+of those macaroons for which Timothy's was famous.  His faint,
+pale, supercilious smile had deepened just a little.  Really, his
+family remained hopelessly provincial, however much of London they
+might possess between them.  In these go-ahead days their provinc-
+ialism stared out even more than it used to.  Why, old Nicholas was
+still a Free Trader, and a member of that antediluvian home of
+Liberalism, the Remove Club--though, to be sure, the members were
+pretty well all Conservatives now, or he himself could not have
+joined; and Timothy, they said, still wore a nightcap.  Aunt Juley
+spoke again.  Dear Soames was looking so well, hardly a day older
+than he did when dear Ann died, and they were all there together,
+dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear Roger.  She paused and
+caught the tear which had climbed the pout on her right cheek.  Did
+he--did he ever hear anything of Irene nowadays?  Aunt Hester
+visibly interposed her shoulder.  Really, Juley was always saying
+something!  The smile left Soames' face, and he put his cup down.
+Here was his subject broached for him, and for all his desire to
+expand, he could not take advantage.
+
+Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:
+
+"They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out and
+out; then of course he saw it would not be right, and made it for
+her life only."
+
+Had Soames heard that?
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now.  He is her trustee; you knew
+that, of course?"
+
+Soames shook his head.  He did know, but wished to show no
+interest.  Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of
+Bosinney's death.
+
+"He must be quite middle-aged by now," went on Aunt Juley dreamily.
+"Let me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in Mount
+Street; long before they went to Stanhope Gate in December.  Just
+before that dreadful Commune.  Over fifty!  Fancy that!  Such a
+pretty baby, and we were all so proud of him; the very first of you
+all."  Aunt Juley sighed, and a lock of not quite her own hair came
+loose and straggled, so that Aunt Hester gave a little shiver.
+Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious piece of self-discovery.
+That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was not yet closed.  He
+had come thinking he could talk of it, even wanting to talk of his
+fettered condition, and--behold! he was shrinking away from this
+reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her Malapropisms.
+
+Oh, Soames was not going already!
+
+Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:
+
+"Yes.  Good-bye.  Remember me to Uncle Timothy!"  And, leaving a
+cold kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and cling
+to his lips as if longing to be kissed away, he left them looking
+brightly after him--dear Soames, it had been so good of him to come
+to-day, when they were not feeling very....!
+
+With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs,
+where was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor and port
+wine, and house where draughts are not permitted.  The poor old
+things--he had not meant to be unkind!  And in the street he
+instantly forgot them, repossessed by the image of Annette and the
+thought of the cursed coil around him.  Why had he not pushed the
+thing through and obtained divorce when that wretched Bosinney was
+run over, and there was evidence galore for the asking!  And he
+turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie's residence in Green
+Street, Mayfair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD
+
+
+That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of fortunes
+as Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he had
+inhabited twenty years at least would have been more noticeable if
+the rent, rates, taxes, and repairs of that house had not been
+defrayed by his father-in-law.  By that simple if wholesale device
+James Forsyte had secured a certain stability in the lives of his
+daughter and his grandchildren.  After all, there is something
+invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a sportsman so
+dashing as Dartie.  Until the events of the last few days he had
+been almost-supernaturally steady all this year.  The fact was he
+had acquired a half share in a filly of George Forsyte's, who had
+gone irreparably on the turf, to the horror of Roger, now stilled
+by the grave.  Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of Shirt-on-fire, by
+Suspender, was a bay filly, three years old, who for a variety of
+reasons had never shown her true form.  With half ownership of this
+hopeful animal, all the idealism latent somewhere in Dartie, as in
+every other man, had put up its head, and kept him quietly ardent
+for months past.  When a man has some thing good to live for it is
+astonishing how sober he becomes; and what Dartie had was really
+good--a three to one chance for an autumn handicap, publicly
+assessed at twenty-five to one.  The old-fashioned heaven was a
+poor thing beside it, and his shirt was on the daughter of Shirt-
+on-fire.  But how much more than his shirt depended on this
+granddaughter of Suspender!  At that roving age of forty-five,
+trying to Forsytes--and, though perhaps less distinguishable from
+any other age, trying even to Darties--Montague had fixed his
+current fancy on a dancer.  It was no mean passion, but without
+money, and a good deal of it, likely to remain a love as airy as
+her skirts; and Dartie never had any money, subsisting miserably on
+what he could beg or borrow from Winifred--a woman of character,
+who kept him because he was the father of her children, and from a
+lingering admiration for those now-dying Wardour Street good looks
+which in their youth had fascinated her.  She, together with anyone
+else who would lend him anything, and his losses at cards and on
+the turf (extraordinary how some men make a good thing out of
+losses!) were his whole means of subsistence; for James was now too
+old and nervous to approach, and Soames too formidably adamant.  It
+is not too much to say that Dartie had been living on hope for
+months.  He had never been fond of money for itself, had always
+despised the Forsytes with their investing habits, though careful
+to make such use of them as he could.  What he liked about money
+was what it bought--personal sensation.
+
+"No real sportsman cares for money," he would say, borrowing a
+'pony' if it was no use trying for a 'monkey.'  There was something
+delicious about Montague Dartie.  He was, as George Forsyte said, a
+'daisy.'
+
+The morning of the Handicap dawned clear and bright, the last day
+of September, and Dartie who had travelled to Newmarket the night
+before, arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an
+eminence to see his half of the filly take her final canter: If she
+won he would be a cool three thou. in pocket--a poor enough
+recompense for the sobriety and patience of these weeks of hope,
+while they had been nursing her for this race.  But he had not been
+able to afford more.  Should he 'lay it off' at the eight to one to
+which she had advanced?  This was his single thought while the
+larks sang above him, and the grassy downs smelled sweet, and the
+pretty filly passed, tossing her head and glowing like satin.
+
+After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid, and to 'lay it
+off' would reduce his winnings to some fifteen hundred--hardly
+enough to purchase a dancer out and out.  Even more potent was the
+itch in the blood of all the Darties for a real flutter.  And
+turning to George he said: "She's a clipper.  She'll win hands
+down; I shall go the whole hog."  George, who had laid off every
+penny, and a few besides, and stood to win, however it came out,
+grinned down on him from his bulky height, with the words: "So ho,
+my wild one!" for after a chequered apprenticeship weathered with
+the money of a deeply complaining Roger, his Forsyte blood was
+beginning to stand him in good stead in the profession of owner.
+
+There are moments of disillusionment in the lives of men from which
+the sensitive recorder shrinks.  Suffice it to say that the good
+thing fell down.  Sleeve-links finished in the ruck.  Dartie's
+shirt was lost.
+
+Between the passing of these things and the day when Soames turned
+his face towards Green Street, what had not happened!
+
+When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised
+self-control for months from religious motives, and remains un-
+rewarded, he does not curse God and die, he curses God and lives,
+to the distress of his family.
+
+Winifred--a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable--who had
+borne the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never
+really believed that he would do what he now did.  Like so many
+wives, she thought she knew the worst, but she had not yet known
+him in his forty-fifth year, when he, like other men, felt that it
+was now or never.  Paying on the 2nd of October a visit of inspec-
+tion to her jewel case, she was horrified to observe that her
+woman's crown and glory was gone--the pearls which Montague had
+given her in '86, when Benedict was born, and which James had been
+compelled to pay for in the spring of '87, to save scandal.  She
+consulted her husband at once.  He 'pooh-poohed' the matter.  They
+would turn up!  Nor till she said sharply: "Very well, then, Monty,
+I shall go down to Scotland Yard myself," did he consent to take
+the matter in hand.  Alas! that the steady and resolved continuity
+of design necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping operations
+should be liable to interruption by drink.  That night Dartie
+returned home without a care in the world or a particle of
+reticence.  Under normal conditions Winifred would merely have
+locked her door and let him sleep it off, but torturing suspense
+about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him.  Taking a small
+revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining table, he
+told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether she lived
+s'long as she was quiet; but he himself wash tired o' life.
+Winifred, holding onto the other side of the dining table,
+answered:
+
+"Don't be a clown, Monty.  Have you been to Scotland Yard?"
+
+Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the
+trigger several times.  It was not loaded.  Dropping it with an
+imprecation, he had muttered: "For shake o' the children," and sank
+into a chair.  Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave him
+some soda water.  The liquor had a magical effect.  Life had
+illused him; Winifred had never 'unshtood'm.'  If he hadn't the
+right to take the pearls he had given her himself, who had?  That
+Spanish filly had got'm.  If Winifred had any 'jection he w'd cut--
+her--throat.  What was the matter with that?  (Probably the first
+use of that celebrated phrase--so obscure are the origins of even
+the most classical language!)
+
+Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school, looked
+up at him, and said: "Spanish filly!  Do you mean that girl we saw
+dancing in the Pandemonium Ballet?  Well, you are a thief and a
+blackguard."  It had been the last straw on a sorely loaded
+consciousness; reaching up from his chair Dartie seized his wife's
+arm, and recalling the achievements of his boyhood, twisted it.
+Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes, but no murmur.
+Watching for a moment of weakness, she wrenched it free; then
+placing the dining table between them, said between her teeth: "You
+are the limit, Monty."  (Undoubtedly the inception of that phrase--
+so is English formed under the stress of circumstances.) Leaving
+Dartie with foam on his dark moustache she went upstairs, and,
+after locking her door and bathing her arm in hot water, lay awake
+all night, thinking of her pearls adorning the neck of another, and
+of the consideration her husband had presumably received therefor.
+
+The man of the world awoke with a sense of  being lost to that
+world, and a dim recollection  of having been called a 'limit.'  He
+sat for half  an hour in the dawn and the armchair where he  had
+slept perhaps the unhappiest half-hour he  had ever spent, for even
+to a Dartie there is something tragic about an end.  And he knew
+that he  had reached it.  Never again would he sleep in his
+dining-room and wake with the light filtering  through those
+curtains bought by Winifred at  Nickens and Jarveys with the money
+of James.  Never again eat a devilled kidney at that rose-wood
+table, after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath.  He took his note
+case from his dress coat pocket.  Four hundred pounds, in fives and
+tens--the remainder of the proceeds of his half of Sleeve-links,
+sold last night, cash down, to George Forsyte, who, having won over
+the race, had not conceived the sudden dislike to the animal which
+he himself now felt.  The ballet was going to Buenos Aires the day
+after to-morrow, and he was going too.  Full value for the pearls
+had not yet been received; he was only at the soup.
+
+He stole upstairs.  Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides,
+the water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed
+stealthily all he could.  It was hard to leave so many shining
+boots, but one must sacrifice something.  Then, carrying a valise
+in either hand, he stepped out onto the landing.  The house was
+very quiet--that house where he had begotten his four children.  It
+was a curious moment, this, outside the room of his wife, once
+admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him 'the limit.'  He
+steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but the next door
+was harder to pass.  It was the room his daughters slept in.  Maud
+was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture came
+into Dartie's early morning eyes.  She was the most like him of the
+four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance.  Just
+coming out, a pretty thing!  He set down the two valises.  This
+almost formal abdication of fatherhood hurt him.  The morning light
+fell on a face which worked with real emotion.  Nothing so false as
+penitence moved him; but genuine paternal feeling, and that
+melancholy of 'never again.'  He moistened his lips; and complete
+irresolution for a moment paralysed his legs in their check
+trousers.  It was hard--hard to be thus compelled to leave his
+home!  "D---nit!" he muttered, "I never thought it would come to
+this."  Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning to
+get up.  And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on downstairs.
+His cheeks were wet, and the knowledge of that was comforting, as
+though it guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice.  He lingered
+a little in the rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some
+papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide.  Then,
+mixing himself a stiff whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette,
+he stood hesitating before a photograph of his two girls, in a
+silver frame.  It belonged to Winifred.  'Never mind,' he thought;
+'she can get another taken, and I can't!'  He slipped it into the
+valise.  Then; putting on his hat and overcoat, he took two others,
+his best malacca cane, an umbrella, and opened the front door.
+Closing it softly behind him, he walked out, burdened as he had
+never been in all his life, and made his way round the corner to
+wait there for an early cab to come by.
+
+Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age
+from the house which he had called his own.
+
+When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house,
+her first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude
+the reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful
+hours.  He had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman
+as likely as not.  Disgusting!  Forced to a complete reticence
+before Imogen and the servants, and aware that her father's nerves
+would never stand the disclosure, she had been unable to refrain
+from going to Timothy's that afternoon, and pouring out the story
+of the pearls to Aunts Juley and Hester in utter confidence.  It
+was only on the following morning that she noticed the
+disappearance of that photograph.  What did it mean?  Careful
+examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he
+had gone for good.  As that conclusion hardened she stood quite
+still in the middle of his dressing-room, with all the drawers
+pulled out, to try and realise what she was feeling.  By no means
+easy!  Though he was 'the limit' he was yet her property, and for
+the life of her she could not but feel the poorer.  To be widowed
+yet not widowed at forty-two; with four children; made conspicuous,
+an object of commiseration!  Gone to the arms of a Spanish Jade!
+Memories, feelings, which she had thought quite dead, revived
+within her, painful, sullen, tenacious.  Mechanically she closed
+drawer after drawer, went to her bed, lay on it, and buried her
+face in the pillows.  She did not cry.  What was the use of that?
+When she got off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only
+one thing could do her good, and that was to have Val home.  He--
+her eldest boy--who was to go to Oxford next month at James'
+expense, was at Littlehampton taking his final gallops with his
+trainer for Smalls, as he would have phrased it following his
+father's diction.  She caused a telegram to be sent to him.
+
+"I must see about his clothes," she said to Imogen; "I can't have
+him going up to Oxford all anyhow.  Those boys are so particular."
+
+"Val's got heaps of things," Imogen answered.
+
+"I know; but they want overhauling.  I hope he'll come."
+
+"He'll come like a shot, Mother.  But he'll probably skew his
+Exam."
+
+"I can't help that," said Winifred.  "I want him."
+
+With an innocent shrewd look at her mother's face, Imogen kept
+silence.  It was father, of course!  Val did come 'like a shot' at
+six o'clock.
+
+Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young
+Publius Valerius Dartie.  A youth so named could hardly turn out
+otherwise.  When he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits,
+and the craving for distinction, had determined that her children
+should have names such as no others had ever had.  (It was a mercy-
+-she felt now--that she had just not named Imogen Thisbe.) But it
+was to George Forsyte, always a wag, that Val's christening was
+due.  It so happened that Dartie dining with him, a week after the
+birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this aspiration of
+Winifred's.
+
+"Call him Cato," said George, "it'll be damned piquant!"  He had
+just won a tenner on a horse of that name.
+
+"Cato!" Dartie had replied--they were a little 'on' as the phrase
+was even in those days--"it's not a Christian name."
+
+"Halo you!" George called to a waiter in knee breeches.  "Bring me
+the Encyc'pedia Brit. from the Library, letter C."
+
+The waiter brought it.
+
+"Here you are!" said George, pointing with his cigar: "Cato Publius
+Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia.  That's what you want.  Publius
+Valerius is Christian enough."
+
+Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred.  She had been
+charmed.  It was so 'chic.'  And Publius Valerius became the baby's
+name, though it afterwards transpired that they had got hold of the
+inferior Cato.  In 1890, however, when little Publius was nearly
+ten, the word 'chic' went out of fashion, and sobriety came in;
+Winifred began to have doubts.  They were confirmed by little
+Publius himself who returned from his first term at school com-
+plaining that life was a burden to him--they called him Pubby.
+Winifred--a woman of real decision--promptly changed his school and
+his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.
+
+At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth,
+light eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile, considerable
+knowledge of what he should not know, and no experience of what he
+ought to do.  Few boys had more narrowly escaped being expelled--
+the engaging rascal.  After kissing his mother and pinching Imogen,
+he ran upstairs three at a time, and came down four, dressed for
+dinner.  He was, awfully sorry, but his 'trainer,' who had come up
+too, had asked him to dine at the Oxford and Cambridge; it wouldn't
+do to miss--the old chap would be hurt.  Winifred let him go with
+an unhappy pride.  She had wanted him at home, but it was very nice
+to know that his tutor was so fond of him.  He went out with a wink
+at Imogen, saying: "I say, Mother, could I have two plover's eggs
+when I come in?--cook's got some.  They top up so jolly well.  Oh!
+and look here--have you any money?--I had to borrow a fiver from
+old Snobby."
+
+Winifred looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:
+
+"My dear, you are naughty about money.  But you shouldn't pay him
+to-night, anyway; you're his guest.  "How nice and slim he looked
+in his white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!
+
+"Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I
+ought to stand the tickets; he's always hard up, you know."
+
+Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:
+
+"Well, perhaps you'd better pay him, but you mustn't stand the
+tickets too."
+
+Val pocketed the fiver.
+
+"If I do, I can't," he said.  "Good-night, Mum!"
+
+He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously, sniffing
+the air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into covert.  Jolly
+good biz!  After that mouldy old slow hole down there!
+
+He found his 'tutor,' not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but
+at the Goat's Club.  This 'tutor' was a year older than himself, a
+good-looking youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a
+small mouth, an oval face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree,
+one of those young men who without effort establish moral
+ascendancy over their companions.  He had missed being expelled
+from school a year before Val, had spent that year at Oxford, and
+Val could almost see a halo round his head.  His name was Crum, and
+no one could get through money quicker.  It seemed to be his only
+aim in life--dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the Forsyte
+would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the value for that
+money was.
+
+They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the Club smoking
+cigars, with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into stalls
+at the Liberty.  For Val the sound of comic songs, the sight of
+lovely legs were fogged and interrupted by haunting fears that he
+would never equal Crum's quiet dandyism.  His idealism was roused;
+and when that is so, one is never quite at ease.  Surely he had too
+wide a mouth, not the best cut of waistcoat, no braid on his
+trousers, and his lavender gloves had no thin black stitchings down
+the back.  Besides, he laughed too much--Crum never laughed, he
+only smiled, with his regular dark brows raised a little so that
+they formed a gable over his just drooped lids.  No! he would never
+be Crum's equal.  All the same it was a jolly good show, and
+Cynthia Dark simply ripping.  Between the acts Crum regaled him
+with particulars of Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge
+became Val's that, if he liked, Crum could go behind.  He simply
+longed to say: "I say, take me!" but dared not, because of his
+deficiencies; and this made the last act or two almost miserable.
+On coming out Crum said: "It's half an hour before they close;
+let's go on to the Pandemonium."  They took a hansom to travel the
+hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because they
+were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade.  It was in
+these little things, this utter negligence of money that Crum had
+such engaging polish.  The ballet was on its last legs and--night,
+and the traffic of the Promenade was suffering for the moment.  Men
+and women were crowded in three rows against the barrier.  The
+whirl and dazzle on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco
+fumes and women's scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which
+belongs to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism.
+He looked admiringly in a young woman's face, saw she was not
+young, and quickly looked away.  Shades of Cynthia Dark!  The young
+woman's arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent of musk
+and mignonette.  Val looked round the corner of his lashes. Perhaps
+she was young, after all.  Her foot trod on his; she begged his
+pardon.  He said:
+
+"Not at all; jolly good ballet, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm tired of it; aren't you?"
+
+Young Val smiled--his wide, rather charming smile.  Beyond that he
+did not go--not yet convinced.  The Forsyte in him stood out for
+greater certainty.  And on the stage the ballet whirled its
+kaleidoscope of snow-white, salmon-pink, and emerald-green and
+violet and seemed suddenly to freeze into a stilly spangled
+pyramid.  Applause broke out, and it was over!  Maroon curtains had
+cut it off.  The semi-circle of men and women round the barrier
+broke up, the young woman's arm pressed his.  A little way off
+disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation; Val
+stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking towards
+it.  Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm.  The one in
+the centre wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a dark
+moustache; he reeled a little as he walked.  Crum's voice said slow
+and level: "Look at that bounder, he's screwed!"  Val turned to
+look.  The 'bounder' had disengaged his arm, and was pointing
+straight at them.  Crum's voice, level as ever, said:
+
+"He seems to know you!"  The 'bounder' spoke:
+
+"H'llo!" he said.  "You f'llows, look!  There's my young rascal of
+a son!"
+
+Val saw.  It was his father!  He could have sunk into the crimson
+carpet.  It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his
+father was 'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by
+heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true.  Yes,
+his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink
+carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk.  And without a word
+he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the Promenade.
+He heard the word, "Val!" behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted
+steps past the 'chuckersout,' into the Square.
+
+To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience
+a young man can go through.  It seemed to Val, hurrying away, that
+his career had ended before it had begun.  How could he go up to
+Oxford now amongst all those chaps, those splendid friends of
+Crum's, who would know that his father was a 'bounder'!  And
+suddenly he hated Crum.  Who the devil was Crum, to say that?  If
+Crum had been beside him at that moment, he would certainly have
+been jostled off the pavement.  His own father--his own!  A choke
+came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands down deep into his
+overcoat pockets.  Damn Crum!  He conceived the wild idea of
+running back and fending his father, taking him by the arm and
+walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up at once and
+pursued his way down Piccadilly.  A young woman planted herself
+before him.  "Not so angry, darling!"  He shied, dodged her, and
+suddenly became quite cool.  If Crum ever said a word, he would
+jolly well punch his head, and there would be an end of it.  He
+walked a hundred yards or more, contented with that thought, then
+lost its comfort utterly.  It wasn't simple like that!  He
+remembered how, at school, when some parent came down who did not
+pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow afterwards.  It was
+one of those things nothing could remove.  Why had his mother
+married his father, if he was a 'bounder'?  It was bitterly unfair-
+-jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a 'bounder' for father.
+The worst of it was that now Crum had spoken the word, he realised
+that he had long known subconsciously that his father was not 'the
+clean potato.'  It was the beastliest thing that had ever happened
+to him--beastliest thing that had ever happened to any fellow!
+And, down-hearted as he had never yet been, he came to Green
+Street, and let himself in with a smuggled latch-key.  In the
+dining-room his plover's eggs were set invitingly, with some cut
+bread and butter, and a little whisky at the bottom of a decanter--
+just enough, as Winifred had thought, for him to feel himself a
+man.  It made him sick to look at them, and he went upstairs.
+
+Winifred heard him pass, and thought: 'The dear boy's in.  Thank
+goodness!  If he takes after his father I don't know what I shall
+do!  But he won't he's like me.  Dear Val!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS
+
+
+When Soames entered his sister's little Louis Quinze drawing-room,
+with its small balcony, always flowered with hanging geraniums in
+the summer, and now with pots of Lilium Auratum, he was struck by
+the immutability of human affairs.  It looked just the same as on
+his first visit to the newly married Darties twenty-one years ago.
+He had chosen the furniture himself, and so completely that no
+subsequent purchase had ever been able to change the room's
+atmosphere.  Yes, he had founded his sister well, and she had
+wanted it.  Indeed, it said a great deal for Winifred that after
+all this time with Dartie she remained well-founded.  From the
+first Soames had nosed out Dartie's nature from underneath the
+plausibility, savoir faire, and good looks which had dazzled
+Winifred, her mother, and even James, to the extent of permitting
+the fellow to marry his daughter without bringing anything but
+shares of no value into settlement.
+
+Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at her
+Buhl bureau with a letter in her hand.  She rose and came towards
+him.  Tall as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well tailored,
+something in her face disturbed Soames.  She crumpled the letter in
+her hand, but seemed to change her mind and held it out to him.  He
+was her lawyer as well as her brother.
+
+Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:
+
+
+'You will not get chance to insult in my own again.  I am leaving
+country to-morrow.  It's played out.  I'm tired of being insulted
+by you.  You've brought on yourself.  No self-respecting man can
+stand it.  I shall not ask you for anything again.  Good-bye.  I
+took the photograph of the two girls.  Give them my love.  I don't
+care what your family say.  It's all their doing.  I'm going to
+live new life.
+
+'M.D.'
+
+
+This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry.  He
+looked at Winifred--the splotch had clearly come from her; and he
+checked the words: 'Good riddance!'  Then it occurred to him that
+with this letter she was entering that very state which he himself
+so earnestly desired to quit--the state of a Forsyte who was not
+divorced.
+
+Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a little
+gold-topped bottle.  A dull commiseration, together with a vague
+sense of injury, crept about Soames' heart.  He had come to her to
+talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the
+same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy
+from him.  It was always like that!  Nobody ever seemed to think
+that he had troubles and interests of his own.  He folded up the
+letter with the splotch inside, and said:
+
+"What's it all about, now?"
+
+Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.
+
+"Do you think he's really gone, Soames?  You see the state he was
+in when he wrote that."
+
+Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by
+pretending that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:
+
+"I shouldn't think so.  I might find out at his Club."
+
+"If George is there," said Winifred, "he would know."
+
+"George?" said Soames; "I saw him at his father's funeral."
+
+"Then he's sure to be there."
+
+Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister's acumen, said
+grudgingly: "Well, I'll go round.  Have you said anything in Park
+Lane?"
+
+"I've told Emily," returned Winifred, who retained that 'chic' way
+of describing her mother.  "Father would have a fit."
+
+Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James.  With
+another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his sister's
+exact position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly.  The evening
+was drawing in--a touch of chill in the October haze.  He walked
+quickly, with his close and concentrated air.  He must get through,
+for he wished to dine in Soho.  On hearing from the hall porter at
+the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie had not been in to-day, he looked at the
+trusty fellow and decided only to ask if Mr. George Forsyte was in
+the Club.  He was.  Soames, who always looked askance at his cousin
+George, as one inclined to jest at his expense, followed the page-
+boy, slightly reassured by the thought that George had just lost
+his father.  He must have come in for about thirty thousand, be-
+sides what he had under that settlement of Roger's, which had
+avoided death duty.  He found George in a bow-window, staring out
+across a half-eaten plate of muffins.  His tall, bulky, black-
+clothed figure loomed almost threatening, though preserving still
+the supernatural neatness of the racing man.  With a faint grin on
+his fleshy face, he said:
+
+"Hallo, Soames!  Have a muffin?"
+
+"No, thanks," murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the
+desire to say something suitable and sympathetic, added:
+
+"How's your mother?"
+
+"Thanks," said George; "so-so.  Haven't seen you for ages.  You
+never go racing.  How's the City?"
+
+Soames, scenting the approach of a jest, closed up, and answered:
+
+"I wanted to ask you about Dartie.  I hear he's...."
+
+"Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola.  Good for
+Winifred and the little Darties.  He's a treat."
+
+Soames nodded.  Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie
+made them kin.
+
+"Uncle James'll sleep in his bed now," resumed George; "I suppose
+he's had a lot off you, too."
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"Ah! You saw him further," said George amicably.  "He's a real
+rouser.  Young Val will want a bit of looking after.  I was always
+sorry for Winifred.  She's a plucky woman."
+
+Again Soames nodded.  "I must be getting back to her," he said;
+"she just wanted to know for certain.  We may have to take steps.
+I suppose there's no mistake?"
+
+"It's quite O.K.," said George--it was he who invented so many of
+those quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources.
+"He was drunk as a lord last night; but he went off all right this
+morning.  His ship's the Tuscarora;" and, fishing out a card, he
+read mockingly:
+
+"'Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.'  I should
+hurry up with the steps, if I were you.  He fairly fed me up last
+night."
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "but it's not always easy."  Then, conscious
+from George's eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own
+affair, he got up, and held out his hand.  George rose too.
+
+"Remember me to Winifred....  You'll enter her for the Divorce
+Stakes straight off if you ask me."
+
+Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway.  George
+had seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked big
+and lonely in those black clothes.  Soames had never known him so
+subdued.  'I suppose he feels it in a way,' he thought.  'They must
+have about fifty thousand each, all told.  They ought to keep the
+estate together.  If there's a war, house property will go down.
+Uncle Roger was a good judge, though.'  And the face of Annette
+rose before him in the darkening street; her brown hair and her
+blue eyes with their dark lashes, her fresh lips and cheeks, dewy
+and blooming in spite of London, her perfect French figure.  'Take
+steps!' he thought.  Re-entering Winifred's house he encountered
+Val, and they went in together.  An idea had occurred to Soames.
+His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to
+go down and see him at Robin Hill.  Robin Hill!  The odd--the very
+odd feeling those words brought back!  Robin Hill--the house
+Bosinney had built for him and Irene--the house they had never
+lived in--the fatal house!  And Jolyon lived there now!  H'm!  And
+suddenly he thought: 'They say he's got a boy at Oxford!  Why not
+take young Val down and introduce them!  It's an excuse!  Less
+bald--very much less bald!' So, as they went upstairs, he said to
+Val:
+
+"You've got a cousin at Oxford; you've never met him.  I should
+like to take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and
+introduce you.  You'll find it useful."
+
+Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames
+clinched it.
+
+"I'll call for you after lunch.  It's in the country--not far;
+you'll enjoy it."
+
+On the threshold of the drawing-room he recalled with an effort
+that the steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment,
+not himself.
+
+Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.
+
+"It's quite true," he said; "he's gone to Buenos Aires, started
+this morning--we'd better have him shadowed when he lands.  I'll
+cable at once.  Otherwise we may have a lot of expense.  The sooner
+these things are done the better.  I'm always regretting that I
+didn't..." he stopped, and looked sidelong at the silent Winifred.
+"By the way," he went on, "can you prove cruelty?"
+
+Winifred said in a dull voice:
+
+"I don't know.  What is cruelty?"
+
+"Well, has he struck you, or anything?"
+
+Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.
+
+"He twisted my arm.  Or would pointing a pistol count?  Or being
+too drunk to undress himself, or--No--I can't bring in the
+children."
+
+"No," said Soames; "no!  I wonder!  Of course, there's legal
+separation--we can get that.  But separation!  Um!"
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Winifred desolately.
+
+"That he can't touch you, or you him; you're both of you married
+and unmarried."  And again he grunted.  What was it, in fact, but
+his own accursed position, legalised!  No, he would not put her
+into that!
+
+"It must be divorce," he said decisively;" failing cruelty, there's
+desertion.  There's a way of shortening the two years, now.  We get
+the Court to give us restitution of conjugal rights.  Then if he
+doesn't obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six months' time.
+Of course you don't want him back.  But they won't know that.
+Still, there's the risk that he might come.  I'd rather try
+cruelty."
+
+Winifred shook her head.  "It's so beastly."
+
+"Well," Soames murmured, "perhaps there isn't much risk so long as
+he's infatuated and got money.  Don't say anything to anybody, and
+don't pay any of his debts."
+
+Winifred sighed.  In spite of all she had been through, the sense
+of loss was heavy on her.  And this idea of not paying his debts
+any more brought it home to her as nothing else yet had.  Some
+richness seemed to have gone out of life.  Without her husband,
+without her pearls, without that intimate sense that she made a
+brave show above the domestic whirlpool, she would now have to face
+the world.  She felt bereaved indeed.
+
+And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put more
+than his usual warmth.
+
+"I have to go down to Robin Hill to-morrow," he said, "to see young
+Jolyon on business.  He's got a boy at Oxford.  I'd like to take
+Val with me and introduce him.  Come down to 'The Shelter' for the
+week-end and bring the children.  Oh! by the way, no, that won't
+do; I've got some other people coming."  So saying, he left her and
+turned towards Soho.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOHO
+
+
+Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London,
+Soho is perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit.  'So-ho, my
+wild one!'  George would have said if he had seen his cousin going
+there.  Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians,
+tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people
+looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the British
+Body Politic.  Yet has it haphazard proprietary instincts of its
+own, and a certain possessive prosperity which keeps its rents up
+when those of other quarters go down.  For long years Soames'
+acquaintanceship with Soho had been confined to its Western
+bastion, Wardour Street.  Many bargains had he picked up there.
+Even during those seven years at Brighton after Bosinney's death
+and Irene's flight, he had bought treasures there sometimes, though
+he had no place to put them; for when the conviction that his wife
+had gone for good at last became firm within him, he had caused a
+board to be put up in Montpellier Square:
+
+FOR SALE
+
+THE LEASE OF THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE
+
+Enquire of Messrs.  Lesson and Tukes,
+Court Street, Belgravia.
+
+
+It had sold within a week--that desirable residence, in the shadow
+of whose perfection a man and a woman--had eaten their hearts out.
+
+Of a misty January evening, just before the board was taken down,
+Soames had gone there once more, and stood against the Square
+railings, looking at its unlighted windows, chewing the cud of
+possessive memories which had turned so bitter in the mouth.  Why
+had she never loved him?  Why?  She had been given all she had
+wanted, and in return had given him, for three long years, all he
+had wanted--except, indeed, her heart.  He had uttered a little
+involuntary groan, and a passing policeman had glanced suspiciously
+at him who no longer possessed the right to enter that green door
+with the carved brass knocker beneath the board 'For Sale!'  A
+choking sensation had attacked his throat, and he had hurried away
+into the mist.  That evening he had gone to Brighton to live....
+
+Approaching Malta Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne, where
+Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her accounts,
+Soames thought with wonder of those seven years at Brighton.  How
+had he managed to go on so long in that town devoid of the scent of
+sweetpeas, where he had not even space to put his treasures?  True,
+those had been years with no time at all for looking at them--years
+of almost passionate money-making, during which Forsyte, Bustard
+and Forsyte had become solicitors to more limited Companies than
+they could properly attend to.  Up to the City of a morning in a
+Pullman car, down from the City of an evening in a Pullman car.
+Law papers again after dinner, then the sleep of the tired, and up
+again next morning.  Saturday to Monday was spent at his Club in
+town--curious reversal of customary procedure, based on the deep
+and careful instinct that while working so hard he needed sea air
+to and from the station twice a day, and while resting must indulge
+his domestic affections.  The Sunday visit to his family in Park
+Lane, to Timothy's, and to Green Street; the occasional visits
+elsewhere had seemed to him as necessary to health as sea air on
+weekdays.  Even since his migration to Mapledurham he had main-
+tained those habits until--he had known Annette.
+
+Whether Annette had produced the revolution in his outlook, or that
+outlook had produced Annette, he knew no more than we know where a
+circle begins.  It was intricate and deeply involved with the
+growing consciousness that property without anyone to leave it to
+is the negation of true Forsyteism.  To have an heir, some
+continuance of self, who would begin where he left off--ensure, in
+fact, that he would not leave off--had quite obsessed him for the
+last year and more.  After buying a bit of Wedgwood one evening in
+April, he had dropped into Malta Street to look at a house of his
+father's which had been turned into a restaurant--a risky pro-
+ceeding, and one not quite in accordance with the terms of the
+lease.  He had stared for a little at the outside  painted a good
+cream colour, with two peacock-blue tubs containing little bay-
+trees in a recessed doorway--and at the words 'Restaurant Bretagne'
+above them in gold letters, rather favourably impressed.  Entering,
+he had noticed that several people were already seated at little
+round green tables with little pots of fresh flowers on them and
+Brittany-ware plates, and had asked of a trim waitress to see the
+proprietor.  They had shown him into a back room, where a girl was
+sitting at a simple bureau covered with papers, and a small round,
+table was laid for two.  The impression of cleanliness, order, and
+good taste was confirmed when the girl got up, saying, "You wish to
+see Maman, Monsieur?" in a broken accent.
+
+"Yes," Soames had answered, "I represent your landlord; in fact,
+I'm his son."   "Won't you sit down, sir, please?  Tell Maman to
+come to this gentleman."
+
+He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed
+business instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was remarkably
+pretty--so remarkably pretty that his eyes found a difficulty in
+leaving her face.  When she moved to put a chair for him, she
+swayed in a curious subtle way, as if she had been put together by
+someone with a special secret skill; and her face and neck, which
+was a little bared, looked as fresh as if they had been sprayed
+with dew.  Probably at this moment Soames decided that the lease
+had not been violated; though to himself and his father he based
+the decision on the efficiency of those illicit adaptations in the
+building, on the signs of prosperity, and the obvious business
+capacity of Madame Lamotte.  He did not, however, neglect to leave
+certain matters to future consideration, which had necessitated
+further visits, so that the little back room had become quite
+accustomed to his spare, not unsolid, but unobtrusive figure, and
+his pale, chinny face with clipped moustache and dark hair not yet
+grizzling at the sides.
+
+"Un Monsieur tres distingue," Madame Lamotte found him; and
+presently, "Tres amical, tres gentil," watching his eyes upon her
+daughter.
+
+She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired
+Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect
+confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their
+knowledge of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank
+balances.
+
+After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits
+ceased--without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like
+all Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a
+born empiricist.  But it was this change in his mode of life which
+had gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to
+alter his condition from that of the unmarried married man to that
+of the married man remarried.
+
+Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899,
+he bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of the
+Dreyfus case--a question which he had always found useful in making
+closer acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her daughter, who
+were Catholic and anti-Dreyfusard.
+
+Scanning those columns, Soames found nothing French, but noticed a
+general fall on the Stock Exchange and an ominous leader about the
+Transvaal.  He entered, thinking: 'War's a certainty.  I shall sell
+my consols.'  Not that he had many, personally, the rate of
+interest was too wretched; but he should advise his Companies--
+consols would assuredly go down.  A look, as he passed the doorways
+of the restaurant, assured him that business was good as ever, and
+this, which in April would have pleased him, now gave him a certain
+uneasiness.  If the steps which he had to take ended in his
+marrying Annette, he would rather see her mother safely back in
+France, a move to which the prosperity of the Restaurant Bretagne
+might become an obstacle.  He would have to buy them out, of
+course, for French people only came to England to make money; and
+it would mean a higher price.  And then that peculiar sweet
+sensation at the back of his throat, and a slight thumping about
+the heart, which he always experienced at the door of the little
+room, prevented his thinking how much it would cost.
+
+Going in, he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing
+through the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her hands
+up to her hair.  It was the attitude in which of all others he
+admired her--so beautifully straight and rounded and supple.  And
+he said:
+
+"I just came in to talk to your mother about pulling down that
+partition.  No, don't call her."
+
+"Monsieur will have supper with us?  It will be ready in ten
+minutes."  Soames, who still held her hand, was overcome by an
+impulse which surprised him.
+
+"You look so pretty to-night," he said, "so very pretty.  Do you
+know how pretty you look, Annette?"
+
+Annette withdrew her hand, and blushed.  "Monsieur is very good."
+
+"Not a bit good," said Soames, and sat down gloomily.
+
+Annette made a little expressive gesture with her hands; a smile
+was crinkling her red lips untouched by salve.
+
+And, looking at those lips, Soames said:
+
+"Are you happy over here, or do you want to go back to France?"
+
+"Oh, I like London.  Paris, of course.  But London is better than
+Orleans, and the English country is so beautiful.  I have been to
+Richmond last Sunday."
+
+Soames went through a moment of calculating struggle.  Mapledurham!
+Dared he?  After all, dared he go so far as that, and show her what
+there was to look forward to!  Still!  Down there one could say
+things.  In this room it was impossible.
+
+"I want you and your mother," he said suddenly, "to come for the
+afternoon next Sunday.  My house is on the river, it's not too late
+in this weather; and I can show you some good pictures.  What do
+you say?"
+
+Annette clasped her hands.
+
+"It will be lovelee.  The river is so beautiful"
+
+"That's understood, then.  I'll ask Madame."
+
+He need say no more to her this evening, and risk giving himself
+away.  But had he not already said too much?  Did one ask
+restaurant proprietors with pretty daughters down to one's country
+house without design?  Madame Lamotte would see, if Annette didn't.
+Well! there was not much that Madame did not see.  Besides, this
+was the second time he had stayed to supper with them; he owed them
+hospitality.
+
+Walking home towards Park Lane--for he was staying at his father's-
+-with the impression of Annette's soft clever hand within his own,
+his thoughts were pleasant, slightly sensual, rather puzzled.  Take
+steps!  What steps?  How?  Dirty linen washed in public?  Pah!
+With his reputation for sagacity, for far-sightedness and the
+clever extrication of others, he, who stood for proprietary
+interests, to become the plaything of that Law of which he was a
+pillar!  There was something revolting in the thought!  Winifred's
+affair was bad enough!  To have a double dose of publicity in the
+family!  Would not a liaison be better than that--a liaison, and a
+son he could adopt?  But dark, solid, watchful, Madame Lamotte
+blocked the avenue of that vision.  No! that would not work.  It
+was not as if Annette could have a real passion for him; one could
+not expect that at his age.  If her mother wished, if the worldly
+advantage were manifestly great--perhaps!  If not, refusal would be
+certain.  Besides, he thought: 'I'm not a villain.  I don't want to
+hurt her; and I don't want anything underhand.  But I do want her,
+and I want a son!  There's nothing for it but divorce--somehow--
+anyhow--divorce!'  Under the shadow of the plane-trees, in the
+lamplight, he passed slowly along the railings of the Green Park.
+Mist clung there among the bluish tree shapes, beyond range of the
+lamps.  How many hundred times he had walked past those trees from
+his father's house in Park Lane, when he was quite a young man; or
+from his own house in Montpellier Square in those four years of
+married life!  And, to-night, making up his mind to free himself if
+he could of that long useless marriage tie, he took a fancy to walk
+on, in at Hyde Park Corner, out at Knightsbridge Gate, just as he
+used to when going home to Irene in the old days.  What could she
+be like now?--how had she passed the years since he last saw her,
+twelve years in all, seven already since Uncle Jolyon left her that
+money?  Was she still beautiful?  Would he know her if he saw her?
+'I've not changed much,' he thought; 'I expect she has.  She made
+me suffer.'  He remembered suddenly one night, the first on which
+he went out to dinner alone--an old Malburian dinner--the first
+year of their marriage.  With what eagerness he had hurried back;
+and, entering softly as a cat, had heard her playing.  Opening the
+drawingroom door noiselessly, he had stood watching the expression
+on her face, different from any he knew, so much more open, so
+confiding, as though to her music she was giving a heart he had
+never seen.  And he remembered how she stopped and looked round,
+how her face changed back to that which he did know, and what an
+icy shiver had gone through him, for all that the next moment he
+was fondling her shoulders.  Yes, she had made him suffer!
+Divorce!  It seemed ridiculous, after all these years of utter
+separation!  But it would have to be.  No other way!  'The
+question,' he thought with sudden realism, 'is--which of us?  She
+or me?  She deserted me.  She ought to pay for it.  There'll be
+someone, I suppose.'  Involuntarily he uttered a little snarling
+sound, and, turning, made his way back to Park Lane.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JAMES SEES VISIONS
+
+
+The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly, detained
+Soames on the inner mat.
+
+"The master's poorly, sir," he murmured.  "He wouldn't go to bed
+till you came in.  He's still in the diningroom.
+
+Soames responded in the hushed tone to which the house was now
+accustomed.
+
+"What's the matter with him, Warmson?"
+
+"Nervous, sir, I think.  Might be the funeral; might be Mrs.
+Dartie's comin' round this afternoon.  I think he overheard
+something.  I've took him in a negus.  The mistress has just gone
+up."
+
+Soames hung his hat on a mahogany stag's-horn.
+
+"All right, Warmson, you can go to bed; I'll take him up myself."
+And he passed into the dining-room.
+
+James was sitting before the fire, in a big armchair, with a
+camel-hair shawl, very light and warm, over his frock-coated
+shoulders, on to which his long white whiskers drooped.  His white
+hair, still fairly thick, glistened in the lamplight; a little
+moisture from his fixed, light-grey eyes stained the cheeks, still
+quite well coloured, and the long deep furrows running to the
+corners of the clean-shaven lips, which moved as if mumbling
+thoughts.  His long legs, thin as a crow's, in shepherd's plaid
+trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a
+spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and
+glistening tapered nails.  Beside him, on a low stool, stood a
+half-finished glass of negus, bedewed with beads of heat.  There he
+had been sitting, with intervals for meals, all day.  At eighty-
+eight he was still organically sound, but suffering terribly from
+the thought that no one ever told him anything.  It is, indeed,
+doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was being buried that
+day, for Emily had kept it from him.  She was always keeping things
+from him.  Emily was only seventy!  James had a grudge against his
+wife's youth.  He felt sometimes that he would never have married
+her if he had known that she would have so many years before her,
+when he had so few.  It was not natural.  She would live fifteen or
+twenty years after he was gone, and might spend a lot of money; she
+had always had extravagant tastes.  For all he knew she might want
+to buy one of these motor-cars.  Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and
+all the young people--they all rode those bicycles now and went off
+Goodness knew where.  And now Roger was gone.  He didn't know--
+couldn't tell!  The family was breaking up.  Soames would know how
+much his uncle had left.  Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames'
+uncle not as his own brother.  Soames!  It was more and more the
+one solid spot in a vanishing world.  Soames was careful; he was a
+warm man; but he had no one to leave his money to.  There it was!
+He didn't know!  And there was that fellow Chamberlain!  For James'
+political principles had been fixed between '70 and '85 when 'that
+rascally Radical' had been the chief thorn in the side of property
+and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion; he
+would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he
+had done with it.  A stormy petrel of a chap!  Where was Soames?
+He had gone to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep
+from him.  He knew that perfectly  well; he had seen his son's
+trousers.  Roger!  Roger in his coffin!  He remembered how, when
+they came up from school together from the West, on the box seat of
+the old Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got into the 'boot' and gone
+to sleep.  James uttered a thin cackle.  A funny fellow--Roger--an
+original!  He didn't know!  Younger than himself, and in his
+coffin!  The family was breaking up.  There was Val going to the
+university; he never came to see him now.  He would cost a pretty
+penny up there.  It was an extravagant age.  And all the pretty
+pennies that his four grandchildren would cost him danced before
+James' eyes.  He did not grudge them the money, but he grudged
+terribly the risk which the spending of that money might bring on
+them; he grudged the diminution of security.  And now that Cicely
+had married, she might be having children too.  He didn't know--
+couldn't tell!  Nobody thought of anything but spending money in
+these days, and racing about, and having what they called 'a good
+time.'  A motor-car went past the window.  Ugly great lumbering
+thing, making all that racket!  But there it was, the country
+rattling to the dogs!  People in such a hurry that they couldn't
+even care for style--a neat turnout like his barouche and bays was
+worth all those new-fangled things.  And consols at 116!  There
+must be a lot of money in the country.  And now there was this old
+Kruger!  They had tried to keep old Kruger from him.  But he knew
+better; there would be a pretty kettle of fish out there!  He had
+known how it would be when that fellow Gladstone--dead now, thank
+God! made such a mess of it after that dreadful business at Majuba.
+He shouldn't wonder if the Empire split up and went to pot.  And
+this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a full quarter of an
+hour with qualms of the most serious character.  He had eaten a
+poor lunch because of them.  But it was after lunch that the real
+disaster to his nerves occurred.  He had been dozing when he became
+aware of voices--low voices.  Ah! they never told him anything!
+Winifred's and her mother's.  "Monty!"  That fellow Dartie--always
+that fellow Dartie!  The voices had receded; and James had been
+left alone, with his ears standing up like a hare's, and fear
+creeping about his inwards.  Why did they leave him alone?  Why
+didn't they come and tell him?  And an awful thought, which through
+long years had haunted him, concreted again swiftly in his brain.
+Dartie had gone bankrupt--fraudulently bankrupt, and to save
+Winifred and the children, he--James would have to pay!  Could he--
+could Soames turn him into a limited company?  No, he couldn't!
+There it was!  With every minute before Emily came back the spectre
+fiercened.  Why, it might be forgery!  With eyes fixed on the
+doubted Turner in the centre of the wall, James suffered tortures.
+He saw Dartie in the dock, his grandchildren in the gutter, and
+himself in bed.  He saw the doubted Turner being sold at Jobson's,
+and all the majestic edifice of property in rags.  He saw in fancy
+Winifred unfashionably dressed, and heard in fancy Emily's voice
+saying: "Now, don't fuss, James!"  She was always saying: "Don't
+fuss!"  She had no nerves; he ought never to have married a woman
+eighteen years younger than himself.  Then Emily's real voice said:
+
+"Have you had a nice nap, James?"
+
+Nap!  He was in torment, and she asked him that!
+
+"What's this about Dartie?" he said, and his eyes glared at her.
+
+Emily's self-possession never deserted her.
+
+"What have you been hearing?" she asked blandly.
+
+"What's this about Dartie?" repeated James.  "He's gone bankrupt."
+
+"Fiddle!"
+
+James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his
+stork-like figure.
+
+"You never tell me anything," he said; "he's gone bankrupt."
+
+The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that
+mattered at the moment.
+
+"He has not," she answered firmly.  "He's gone to Buenos Aires."
+
+If she had said "He's gone to Mars" she could not have dealt James
+a more stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in British
+securities, could as little grasp one place as the other.
+
+"What's he gone there for?" he said.  "He's got no money.  What did
+he take?"
+
+Agitated within by Winifred's news, and goaded by the constant
+reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:
+
+"He took Winifred's pearls and a dancer."
+
+"What!" said James, and sat down.
+
+His sudden collapse alarmed her, and smoothing his forehead, she
+said:
+
+"Now, don't fuss, James!"
+
+A dusky red had spread over James' cheeks and forehead.
+
+"I paid for them," he said tremblingly; "he's a thief!  I--I knew
+how it would be.  He'll be the death of me; he ...."  Words failed
+him and he sat quite still.  Emily, who thought she knew him so
+well, was alarmed, and went towards the sideboard where she kept
+some sal volatile.  She could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit
+working in that thin, tremulous shape against the extravagance of
+the emotion called up by this outrage on Forsyte principles--the
+Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying: 'You mustn't get into a
+fantod, it'll never do.  You won't digest your lunch.  You'll have
+a fit!'All unseen by her, it was doing better work in James than
+sal volatile.
+
+"Drink this," she said.
+
+James waved it aside.
+
+"What was Winifred about," he said, "to let him take her pearls?"
+Emily perceived the crisis past.
+
+"She can have mine," she said comfortably.  "I never wear them.
+She'd better get a divorce."
+
+"There you go!" said James.  "Divorce!  We've never had a divorce
+in the family.  Where's Soames?"
+
+"He'll be in directly."
+
+"No, he won't," said James, almost fiercely; "he's at the funeral.
+You think I know nothing."
+
+"Well," said Emily with calm, "you shouldn't get into such fusses
+when we tell you things."  And plumping up his cushions, and
+putting the sal volatile beside him, she left the room.
+
+But James sat there seeing visions--of Winifred in the Divorce
+Court, and the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on
+Roger's coffin; of Val taking after his father; of the pearls he
+had paid for and would never see again; of money back at four per
+cent., and the country going to the dogs; and, as the afternoon
+wore into evening, and tea-time passed, and dinnertime, those
+visions became more and more mixed and menacing--of being told
+nothing, till he had nothing left of all his wealth, and they told
+him nothing of it.  Where was Soames?  Why didn't he come in?...
+His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it to drink, and saw
+his son standing there looking at him.  A little sigh of relief
+escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he said:
+
+"There you are!  Dartie's gone to Buenos Aires."
+
+Soames nodded.  "That's all right," he said; "good riddance."
+
+A wave of assuagement passed over James' brain.  Soames knew.
+Soames was the only one of them all who had sense.  Why couldn't he
+come and live at home?  He had no son of his own.  And he said
+plaintively:
+
+"At my age I get nervous.  I wish you were more at home, my boy."
+
+Again Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no
+understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident touched
+his father's shoulder.
+
+"They sent their love to you at Timothy's," he said.  "It went off
+all right.  I've been to see Winifred.  I'm going to take steps."
+And he thought: 'Yes, and you mustn't hear of them.'
+
+James looked up; his long white whiskers quivered, his thin throat
+between the points of his collar looked very gristly and naked.
+
+"I've been very poorly all day," he said; "they never tell me
+anything."
+
+Soames' heart twitched.
+
+"Well, it's all right.  There's nothing to worry about.  Will you
+come up now?" and he put his hand under his father's arm.
+
+James obediently and tremulously raised himself, and together they
+went slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the
+firelight, and out to the stairs.  Very slowly they ascended.
+
+"Good-night, my boy," said James at his bedroom door.
+
+"Good-night, father," answered Soames.  His hand stroked down the
+sleeve beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it,
+so thin was the arm.  And, turning away from the light in the
+opening doorway, he went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.
+
+'I want a son,' he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed; ' I
+want a son.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME
+
+
+Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper
+lawn at Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled
+under it and said to Soames: "Forsyte, I've found the very place
+for your house."  Since then Swithin had dreamed, and old Jolyon
+died, beneath its branches.  And now, close to the swing,
+no-longer-young Jolyon often painted there.  Of all spots in the
+world it was perhaps the most sacred to him, for he had loved his
+father.
+
+Contemplating its great girth--crinkled and a little mossed, but
+not yet hollow--he would speculate on the passage of time.  That
+tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he
+shouldn't wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least.  His own
+fifty years were as nothing to its wood.  When the house behind it,
+which he now owned, was three hundred years of age instead of
+twelve, that tree might still be standing there, vast and hollow--
+for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it down?  A Forsyte
+might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it jealously.
+And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like coated with
+such age.  Wistaria was already about its walls--the new look had
+gone.  Would its hold its own and keep the dignity Bosinney had
+bestowed on it, or would the giant London have lapped it round and
+made it into an asylum in the midst of a jerry-built wilderness?
+Often, within and without of it, he was persuaded that Bosinney had
+been moved by the spirit when he built.  He had put his heart into
+that house, indeed!  It might even become one of the 'homes of
+England'--a rare achievement for a house in these degenerate days
+of building.  And the aesthetic spirit, moving hand in hand with
+his Forsyte sense of possessive continuity, dwelt with pride and
+pleasure on his ownership thereof.  There was the smack of
+reverence and ancestor-worship (if only for one ancestor) in his
+desire to hand this house down to his son and his son's son.  His
+father had loved the house, had loved the view, the grounds, that
+tree; his last years had been happy there, and no one had lived
+there before him.  These last eleven years at Robin Hill had formed
+in Jolyon's life as a painter, the important period of success.  He
+was now in the very van of water-colour art, hanging on the line
+everywhere.  His drawings fetched high prices.  Specialising in
+that one medium with the tenacity of his breed, he had 'arrived'-
+-rather late, but not too late for a member of the family which
+made a point of living for ever.  His art had really deepened and
+improved.  In conformity with his position he had grown a short
+fair beard, which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his
+Forsyte chin; his brown face had lost the warped expression of his
+ostracised period--he looked, if anything, younger.  The loss of
+his wife in 1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which
+turn out in the end for the good of all.  He had, indeed, loved her
+to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become
+increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous
+even of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint
+that he could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to
+everyone, and better dead.'  He had mourned her sincerely, but his
+face had looked younger since she died.  If she could only have
+believed that she made him happy, how much happier would the twenty
+years of their companionship have been!
+
+June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly
+taken her own mother's place; and ever since old Jolyon died she
+had been established in a sort of studio in London.  But she had
+come back to Robin Hill on her stepmother's death, and gathered the
+reins there into her small decided hands.  Jolly was then at
+Harrow; Holly still learning from Mademoiselle Beauce.  There had
+been nothing to keep Jolyon at home, and he had removed his grief
+and his paint-box abroad.  There he had wandered, for the most part
+in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in Paris.  He had stayed
+there several months, and come back with the younger face and the
+short fair beard.  Essentially a man who merely lodged in any
+house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign at Robin
+Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where and when
+he liked.  She was inclined, it is true, to regard the house rather
+as an asylum for her proteges! but his own outcast days had filled
+Jolyon for ever with sympathy towards an outcast, and June's 'lame
+ducks' about the place did not annoy him.  By all means let her
+have them down--and feed them up; and though his slightly cynical
+humour perceived that they ministered to his daughter's love of
+domination as well as moved her warm heart, he never ceased to
+admire her for having so many ducks.  He fell, indeed, year by year
+into a more and more detached and brotherly attitude towards his
+own son and daughters, treating them with a sort of whimsical
+equality.  When he went down to Harrow to see Jolly, he never quite
+knew which of them was the elder, and would sit eating cherries
+with him out of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical
+smile twisting up an eyebrow and curling his lips a little.  And he
+was always careful to have money in his pocket, and to be modish in
+his dress, so that his son need not blush for him.  They were
+perfect friends, but never seemed to have occasion for verbal
+confidences, both having the competitive self-consciousness of
+Forsytes.  They knew they would stand by each other in scrapes, but
+there  was no need to talk about it.  Jolyon had a striking horror-
+-partly original sin, but partly the result of his early
+immorality--of the moral attitude.  The most he could ever have
+said to his son would have been:  "Look here, old man; don't forget
+you're a gentleman," and then have wondered whimsically whether
+that was not a snobbish sentiment.  The great cricket match was
+perhaps the most searching and awkward time they annually went
+through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton.  They would be
+particularly careful during that match, continually saying:
+"Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!"
+to each other, when some disaster at which their hearts bounded
+happened to the opposing  school.  And Jolyon would wear a grey top
+hat, instead of his usual soft one, to save his son's feelings, for
+a black top hat he could not stomach.  When Jolly went up to
+Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused, humble, and a little
+anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these youths who
+seemed so much more assured and old than himself.  He often
+thought, 'Glad I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing
+at Lloyds--'it's so innocuous.  You can't look down on a painter--
+you can't take him seriously enough.'  For Jolly, who had a sort of
+natural lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who
+secretly amused his father.  The boy had fair hair which curled a
+little, and his grandfather's deepset iron-grey eyes.  He was
+well-built and very upright, and always pleased Jolyon's aesthetic
+sense, so that he was a tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are
+of those of their own sex whom they admire physically.  On that
+occasion, however, he actually did screw up his courage to give his
+son advice, and this was it:
+
+"Look here, old man, you're bound to get into debt; mind you come
+to me at once.  Of course, I'll always pay them.  But you might
+remember that one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays
+one's own way.  And don't ever borrow, except from me, will you?"
+
+And Jolly had said:
+
+"All right, Dad, I won't," and he never had.
+
+"And there's just one other thing.  I don't know much about
+morality and that, but there is this: It's always worth while
+before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt
+another person more than is absolutely necessary."
+
+Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had squeezed
+his father's hand.  And Jolyon had thought: 'I wonder if I had the
+right to say that?'  He always had a sort of dread of losing the
+dumb confidence they had in each other; remembering how for long
+years he had lost his own father's, so that there had been nothing
+between them but love at a great distance.  He under-estimated, no
+doubt, the change in the spirit of the age since he himself went up
+to Cambridge in '65; and perhaps he underestimated, too, his boy's
+power of understanding that he was tolerant to the very bone.  It
+was that tolerance of his, and possibly his scepticism, which ever
+made his relations towards June so queerly defensive.  She was such
+a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly well; wanted things
+so inexorably until she got them--and then, indeed, often dropped
+them like a hot potato.  Her mother had been like that, whence had
+come all those tears.  Not that his incompatibility with his
+daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs.
+Young Jolyon.  One could be amused where a daughter was concerned;
+in a wife's case one could not be amused.  To see June set her
+heart and jaw on a thing until she got it was all right, because it
+was never anything which interfered fundamentally with Jolyon's
+liberty--the one thing on which his jaw was also absolutely rigid,
+a considerable jaw, under that short grizzling beard.  Nor was
+there ever any necessity for real heart-to-heart encounters.  One
+could break away into irony--as indeed he often had to.  But the
+real trouble with June was that she had never appealed to his
+aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her red-gold hair
+and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the Berserker in
+her spirit.  It was very different with Holly, soft and quiet, shy
+and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere.  He watched
+this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with
+extraordinary interest.  Would she come out a swan?  With her
+sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark
+lashes, she might, or she might not.  Only this last year had he
+been able to guess.  Yes, she would be a swan--rather a dark one,
+always a shy one, but an authentic swan.  She was eighteen now, and
+Mademoiselle Beauce was gone--the excellent lady had removed, after
+eleven years haunted by her continuous reminiscences of the 'well-
+brrred little Tayleurs,' to another family whose bosom would now be
+agitated by her reminiscences of the 'well-brrred little Forsytes.'
+She had taught Holly to speak French like herself.
+
+Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his
+younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the
+afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him
+which caused his eyebrows to go up:
+
+
+        Mr. SOAMES FORSYTE
+
+THE SHELTER,          CONNOISSEURS CLUB,
+MAPLEDURHAM.          ST. JAMES'S.
+
+
+But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again ....
+
+To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a
+little daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved
+father lying peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never
+likely to be, forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man
+as Jolyon.  A sense as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and
+about the end of one whose life had been so well-ordered, balanced,
+and above-board.  It seemed incredible that his father could thus
+have vanished without, as it were, announcing his intention,
+without last words to his son, and due farewells.  And those
+incoherent allusions of little Holly to 'the lady in grey,' of
+Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded) involved all
+things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father's will
+and the codicil thereto.  It had been his duty as executor of that
+will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her
+life interest in fifteen thousand pounds.  He had called on her to
+explain that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to
+meet the charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of
+œ430 odd a year, clear of income tax.  This was but the third time
+he had seen his cousin Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his
+wife, of which he was not quite sure.  He remembered having seen
+her sitting in the Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney--a
+passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of Titian's 'Heavenly
+Love,' and again, when, charged by his father, he had gone to
+Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's death was
+known.  He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
+drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing
+from wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the
+compassion he had felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are
+not at home!" and the slam of the front door.
+
+This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from
+that warp of wild hope and despair.  Looking at her, he thought:
+'Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!'  And the
+strange story of his father's Indian summer became slowly clear to
+him.  She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes.
+"He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don't know why.  He looked so
+beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the tree; it was
+I who first came on him sitting there, you know.  Such a lovely
+day.  I don't think an end could have been happier.  We should all
+like to go out like that."  'Quite right I' he had thought.  'We
+should all a like to go out in full summer with beauty stepping
+towards us across a lawn.'  And looking round the little, almost
+empty drawing-room, he had asked her what she was going to do now.
+"I am going to live again a little, Cousin Jolyon.  It's wonderful
+to have money of one's own.  I've never had any.  I shall keep this
+flat, I think; I'm used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy."
+Exactly!"  Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling
+lips; and he had gone away thinking: 'A fascinating woman!  What a
+waste!  I'm glad the Dad left her that money.'  He had not seen her
+again, but every quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it to
+her bank, with a note to the Chelsea flat to say that he had done
+so; and always he had received a note in acknowledgment, generally
+from the flat, but sometimes from Italy; so that her personality
+had become embodied in slightly scented grey paper, an upright fine
+handwriting, and the words, 'Dear Cousin Jolyon.'  Man of property
+that he now was, the slender cheque he signed often gave rise to
+the thought: 'Well, I suppose she just manages'; sliding into a
+vague wonder how she was faring otherwise in a world of men not
+wont to let beauty go unpossessed.  At first Holly had spoken of
+her sometimes, but 'ladies in grey' soon fade from children's
+memories; and the tightening of June's lips in those first weeks
+after her grandfather's death whenever her former friend's name was
+mentioned, had discouraged allusion.  Only once, indeed, had June
+spoken definitely: "I've forgiven her.  I'm frightfully glad she's
+independent now...."
+
+On receiving Soames' card, Jolyon said to the maid--for he could
+not abide butlers--"  Show him into the study, please, and say I'll
+be there in a minute"; and then he looked at Holly and asked:
+
+"Do you remember 'the lady in grey,' who used to give you music-
+lessons?"
+
+"Oh yes, why?  Has she come?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a coat,
+was silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not for those
+young ears.  His face, in fact, became whimsical perplexity
+incarnate while he journeyed towards the study.
+
+Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at
+the oak tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he
+thought: 'Who's that boy?  Surely they never had a child.'
+
+The elder figure turned.  The meeting of those two Forsytes of the
+second generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in
+the house built for the one and owned and occupied by the other,
+was marked by subtle defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at
+cordiality.  'Has he come about his wife?' Jolyon was thinking; and
+Soames, 'How shall I begin?' while Val, brought to break the ice,
+stood negligently scrutinising this 'bearded pard' from under his
+dark, thick eyelashes.
+
+"This is Val Dartie," said Soames, "my sister's son.  He's just
+going up to Oxford.  I thought I'd like him to know your boy."
+
+"Ah!  I'm sorry Jolly's away.  What college?"
+
+"B.N.C.," replied Val.
+
+"Jolly's at the 'House,' but he'll be delighted to look you up."
+
+"Thanks awfully."
+
+"Holly's in--if you could put up with a female relation, she'd show
+you round.  You'll find her in the hall if you go through the
+curtains.  I was just painting her."
+
+With another "Thanks, awfully!"  Val vanished, leaving the two
+cousins with the ice unbroken.
+
+"I see you've some drawings at the 'Water Colours,'" said Soames.
+
+Jolyon winced.  He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family at
+large for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his mind
+with Frith's 'Derby Day' and Landseer prints.  He had heard from
+June that Soames was a connoisseur, which made it worse.  He had
+become aware, too, of a curious sensation of repugnance.
+
+"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.
+
+"No," answered Soames between close lips, "not since--as a matter
+of fact, it's about that I've come.  You're her trustee, I'm told."
+
+Jolyon nodded.
+
+"Twelve years is a long time," said Soames rapidly: "I--I'm tired
+of it."
+
+Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:
+
+"Won't you smoke?"
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.
+
+"I wish to be free," said Soames abruptly.
+
+"I don't see her," murmured Jolyon through the fume of his
+cigarette.
+
+"But you know where she lives, I suppose?"
+
+Jolyon nodded.  He did not mean to give her address without
+permission.  Soames seemed to divine his thought.
+
+"I don't want her address," he said; "I know it."
+
+"What exactly do you want?"
+
+"She deserted me.  I want a divorce."
+
+"Rather late in the day, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames.  And there was a silence.
+
+"I don't know much about these things--at least, I've forgotten,"
+said Jolyon with a wry smile.  He himself had had to wait for death
+to grant him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon.  "Do you wish me
+to see her about it?"
+
+Soames raised his eyes to his cousin's face.  "I suppose there's
+someone," he said.
+
+A shrug moved Jolyon's shoulders.
+
+"I don't know at all.  I imagine you may have both lived as if the
+other were dead.  It's usual in these cases."
+
+Soames turned to the window.  A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed
+the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind.  Jolyon
+saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn
+towards the stables.  'I'm not going to run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds,' he thought.  ' I must act for her.  The Dad would
+have wished that.'  And for a swift moment he seemed to see his
+father's figure in the old armchair, just beyond Soames, sitting
+with knees crossed, The Times in his hand.  It vanished.
+
+"My father was fond of her," he said quietly.
+
+"Why he should have been I don't know," Soames answered without
+looking round.  "She brought trouble to your daughter June; she
+brought trouble to everyone.  I gave her all she wanted.  I would
+have given her even--forgiveness--but she chose to leave me."
+
+In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice.
+What was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be sorry
+for him?
+
+"I can go and see her, if you like," he said.  "I suppose she might
+be glad of a divorce, but I know nothing."
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"Yes, please go.  As I say, I know her address; but I've no wish to
+see her."  His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were very
+dry.
+
+"You'll have some tea?" said Jolyon, stifling the words: 'And see
+the house.'  And he led the way into the hall.  When he had rung
+the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing
+to the wall.  He could not bear, somehow, that his work should be
+seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of the great
+room which had been designed expressly to afford wall space for his
+own pictures.  In his cousin's face, with its unseizable family
+likeness to himself, and its chinny, narrow, concentrated look,
+Jolyon saw that which moved him to the thought: 'That chap could
+never forget anything--nor ever give himself away.  He's pathetic!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE COLT AND THE FILLY
+
+
+When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was
+thinking: 'This is jolly dull!  Uncle Soames does take the bun.
+I wonder what this filly's like?'  He anticipated no pleasure from
+her society; and suddenly he saw her standing there looking at him.
+Why, she was pretty!  What luck!
+
+"I'm afraid you don't know me," he said.  "My name's Val Dartie--
+I'm once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know.  My
+mother's name was Forsyte."
+
+Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too
+shy to withdraw it, said:
+
+"I don't know any of my relations.  Are there many?"
+
+"Tons.  They're awful--most of them.  At least, I don't know--some
+of them.  One's relations always are, aren't they?"
+
+"I expect they think one awful too," said Holly.
+
+"I don't know why they should.  No one could think you awful, of
+course."
+
+Holly looked at him--the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave
+young Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.
+
+"I mean there are people and people," he added astutely.  "Your dad
+looks awfully decent, for instance."
+
+"Oh yes!" said Holly fervently; "he is."
+
+A flush mounted in Val's cheeks--that scene in the Pandemonium
+promenade--the dark man with the pink carnation developing into his
+own father!  "But you know what the Forsytes are," he said almost
+viciously.  "Oh! I forgot; you don't."
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit.  Look at Uncle
+Soames!"
+
+"I'd like to," said Holly.
+
+Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers.  "Oh! no," he
+said, "let's go out.  You'll see him quite soon enough.  What's
+your brother like?"
+
+Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without
+answering.  How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered
+anything, had been her lord, master, and ideal?
+
+"Does he sit on you?" said Val shrewdly.  "I shall be knowing him
+at Oxford.  Have you got any horses?"
+
+Holly nodded.  "Would you like to see the stables?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into the
+stable-yard.  There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy brown-and-
+white dog, so old that he did not get up, but faintly waved the
+tail curled over his back.
+
+"That's Balthasar," said Holly; "he's so old--awfully old, nearly
+as old as I am.  Poor old boy!  He's devoted to Dad."
+
+"Balthasar!  That's a rum name.  He isn't purebred you know."
+
+"No!  but he's a darling," and she bent down to stroke the dog.
+Gentle and supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck and
+hands, she seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing slipped
+between him and all previous knowledge.
+
+"When grandfather died," she said, "he wouldn't eat for two days.
+He saw him die, you know."
+
+"Was that old Uncle Jolyon?  Mother always says he was a topper."
+
+"He was," said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.
+
+In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a
+long black tail and mane.  "This is mine Fairy."
+
+"Ah!" said Val, "she's a jolly palfrey.  But you ought to bang her
+tail.  She'd look much smarter."  Then catching her wondering look,
+he thought suddenly: 'I don't know--anything she likes!'  And he
+took a long sniff of the stable air.  "Horses are ripping, aren't
+they?  My Dad ..."  he stopped.
+
+"Yes?" said Holly.
+
+An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him--but not quite.
+"Oh!  I don't know he's often gone a mucker over them.  I'm jolly
+keen on them too--riding and hunting.  I like racing awfully, as
+well; I should like to be a gentleman rider."  And oblivious of the
+fact that he had but one more day in town, with two engagements, he
+plumped out:
+
+"I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in Richmond
+Park?"
+
+Holly clasped her hands.
+
+"Oh yes!  I simply love riding.  But there's Jolly's horse; why
+don't you ride him?  Here he is.  We could go after tea."
+
+Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.
+
+He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown boots
+and Bedford cords.
+
+"I don't much like riding his horse," he said.  "He mightn't like
+it.  Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect.  Not that I
+believe in buckling under to him, you know.  You haven't got an
+uncle, have you?  This is rather a good beast," he added,
+scrutinising Jolly's horse, a dark brown, which was showing the
+whites of its eyes.  "You haven't got any hunting here, I suppose?"
+
+"No; I don't know that I want to hunt.  It must be awfully
+exciting, of course; but it's cruel, isn't it?  June says so."
+
+"Cruel?" ejaculated Val.  "Oh! that's all rot.  Who's June?"
+
+"My sister--my half-sister, you know--much older than me."  She had
+put her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly's horse, and was rubbing
+her nose against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which
+seemed to have an hypnotic effect on the animal.  Val contemplated
+her cheek resting against the horse's nose, and her eyes gleaming
+round at him.  'She's really a duck,' he thought.
+
+They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by
+the dog Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth, and
+clearly expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.
+
+"This is a ripping place," said Val from under the oak tree, where
+they had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.
+
+"Yes," said Holly, and sighed.  "Of course I want to go everywhere.
+I wish I were a gipsy."
+
+"Yes, gipsies are jolly," replied Val, with a conviction which had
+just come to him; "you're rather like one, you know."
+
+Holly's face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded by
+the sun.
+
+"To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in the
+open--oh! wouldn't it be fun?"
+
+"Let's do it!" said Val.
+
+"Oh yes, let's!"
+
+"It'd be grand sport, just you and I."
+
+Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.
+
+"Well, we've got to do it," said Val obstinately, but reddening
+too.
+
+"I believe in doing things you want to do.  What's down there?"
+
+"The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm."
+
+"Let's go down!"
+
+Holly glanced back at the house.
+
+"It's tea-time, I expect; there's Dad beckoning."
+
+Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.
+
+When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two middle-aged
+Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical effect, and they
+became quite silent.  It was, indeed, an impressive spectacle.  The
+two were seated side by side on an arrangement in marqueterie which
+looked like three silvery pink chairs made one, with a low
+tea-table in front of them.  They seemed to have taken up that
+position, as far apart as the seat would permit, so that they need
+not look at each other too much; and they were eating and drinking
+rather than talking--Soames with his air of despising the tea-cake
+as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding himself slightly amusing.  To
+the casual eye neither would have seemed greedy, but both were
+getting through a good deal of sustenance.  The two young ones
+having been supplied with food, the process went on silent and
+absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, Jolyon said to
+Soames:
+
+"And how's Uncle James?"
+
+"Thanks, very shaky."
+
+"We're a wonderful family, aren't we?  The other day I was
+calculating the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my
+father's family Bible.  I make it eighty-four already, and five
+still living.  They ought to beat the record;" and looking
+whimsically at Soames, he added:
+
+"We aren't the men they were, you know."
+
+Soames smiled.  'Do you really think I shall admit that I'm not
+their equal'; he seemed to be saying, 'or that I've got to give up
+anything, especially life?'
+
+"We may live to their age, perhaps," pursued Jolyon, "but self-
+consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that's the difference
+between us.  We've lost conviction. How and when self-consciousness
+was born I never can make out.  My father had a little, but I don't
+believe any other of the old Forsytes ever had a scrap.  Never to
+see yourself as others see you, it's a wonderful preservative.  The
+whole history of the last century is in the difference between us.
+And between us and you," he added, gazing through a ring of smoke
+at Val and Holly, uncomfortable under his quizzical regard,
+"there'll be--another difference.  I wonder what."
+
+Soames took out his watch.
+
+"We must go," he said, "if we're to catch our train."
+
+"Uncle Soames never misses a train," muttered Val, with his mouth
+full.
+
+"Why should I?" Soames answered simply.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," grumbled Val, "other people do."
+
+At the front door he gave Holly's slim brown hand a long and
+surreptitious squeeze.
+
+"Look out for me to-morrow," he whispered; "three o'clock.  I'll
+wait for you in the road; it'll save time.  We'll have a ripping
+ride."  He gazed back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the
+principles of a man about town, would have waved his hand.  He felt
+in no mood to tolerate his uncle's conversation.  But he was not in
+danger.  Soames preserved a perfect muteness, busy with far-away
+thoughts.
+
+The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and a
+half which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days
+when he came down to watch with secret pride the building of the
+house--that house which was to have been the home of him and her
+from whom he was now going to seek release.  He looked back once,
+up that endless vista of autumn lane between the yellowing hedges.
+What an age ago!  "I don't want to see her," he had said to Jolyon.
+Was that true?  'I may have to,' he thought; and he shivered,
+seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say mean
+footsteps on one's grave.  A chilly world!  A queer world!  And
+glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: 'Wish I were his age!
+I wonder what she's like now!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP
+
+
+When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting, for
+daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving unconsciously
+a revival of that momentary vision of his father sitting in the old
+leather chair with his knees crossed and his straight eyes gazing
+up from under the dome of his massive brow.  Often in this little
+room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would catch a moment of
+communion with his father.  Not, indeed, that he had definitely any
+faith in the persistence of the human spirit--the feeling was not
+so logical--it was, rather, an atmospheric impact, like a scent, or
+one of those strong animistic impressions from forms, or effects of
+light, to which those with the artist's eye are especially prone.
+Here only--in this little unchanged room where his father had spent
+the most of his waking hours--could be retrieved the feeling that
+he was not quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old spirit
+and the warmth of his masterful lovability endured.
+
+What would his father be advising now, in this sudden recrudescence
+of an old tragedy--what would he say to this menace against her to
+whom he had taken such a fancy in the last weeks of his life?  'I
+must do my best for her,' thought Jolyon; 'he left her to me in his
+will.  But what is the best?'
+
+And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd
+common sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient chair
+and crossed his knees.  But he felt a mere shadow sitting there;
+nor did any inspiration come, while the fingers of the wind tapped
+on the darkening panes of the french-window.
+
+'Go and see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here?
+What's her life been?  What is it now, I wonder?  Beastly to rake
+up things at this time of day.'  Again the figure of his cousin
+standing with a hand on a front door of a fine olive-green leaped
+out, vivid, like one of those figures from old-fashioned clocks
+when the hour strikes; and his words sounded in Jolyon's ears
+clearer than any chime: "I manage my own affairs.  I've told you
+once, I tell you again: We are not at home."  The repugnance he had
+then felt for Soames--for his flat-cheeked, shaven face full of
+spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure
+slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not digest--
+came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase.  'I
+dislike him,' he thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me.
+And that's lucky; it'll make it easier for me to back his wife.'
+Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally averse
+from what he termed 'ructions'; unless angered, he conformed deeply
+to that classic description of the she-dog, 'Er'd ruther run than
+fight.'  A little smile became settled in his beard.  Ironical that
+Soames should come down here--to this house, built for himself!
+How he had gazed and gaped at this ruin of his past intention;
+furtively nosing at the walls and stairway, appraising everything!
+And intuitively Jolyon thought: 'I believe the fellow even now
+would like to be living here.  He could never leave off longing for
+what he once owned!  Well, I must act, somehow or other; but it's a
+bore--a great bore.'
+
+Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene
+would see him.
+
+The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so
+wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms.
+Rumours of war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the
+close of the summer holidays.  And the streets to Jolyon, who was
+not often up in town, had a feverish look, due to these new motor-
+cars and cabs, of which he disapproved aesthetically.  He counted
+these vehicles from his hansom, and made the proportion of them one
+in twenty.  'They were one in thirty about a year ago,' he thought;
+'they've come to stay.  Just so much more rattling round of wheels
+and general stink'--for he was one of those rather rare Liberals
+who object to anything new when it takes a material form; and he
+instructed his driver to get down to the river quickly, out of the
+traffic, desiring to look at the water through the mellowing screen
+of plane-trees.  At the little block of flats which stood back some
+fifty yards from the Embankment, he told the cabman to wait, and
+went up to the first floor.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Heron was at home!
+
+The effect of a settled if very modest income was at once apparent
+to him remembering the threadbare refinement in that tiny flat
+eight years ago when he announced her good fortune.  Everything was
+now fresh, dainty, and smelled of flowers.  The general effect was
+silvery with touches of black, hydrangea colour, and gold.  'A
+woman of great taste,' he thought.  Time had dealt gently with
+Jolyon, for he was a Forsyte.  But with Irene Time hardly seemed to
+deal at all, or such was his impression.  She appeared to him not a
+day older, standing there in mole-coloured velvet corduroy, with
+soft dark eyes and dark gold hair, with outstretched hand and a
+little smile.
+
+"Won't you sit down?"
+
+He had probably never occupied a chair with a fuller sense of
+embarrassment.
+
+"You look absolutely unchanged," he said.
+
+"And you look younger, Cousin Jolyon."
+
+Jolyon ran his hands through his hair, whose thickness was still a
+comfort to him.
+
+"I'm ancient, but I don't feel it.  That's one thing about paint-
+ing, it keeps you young.  Titian lived to ninety-nine, and had to
+have plague to kill him off.  Do you know, the first time I ever
+saw you I thought of a picture by him?"
+
+"When did you see me for the first time?"
+
+"In the Botanical Gardens."
+
+"How did you know me, if you'd never seen me before?"
+
+"By someone who came up to you."  He was looking at her hardily,
+but her face did not change; and she said quietly:
+
+"Yes; many lives ago."
+
+"What is your recipe for youth, Irene?"
+
+"People who don't live are wonderfully preserved."
+
+H'm! a bitter little saying!  People who don't live!  But an
+opening, and he took it.  "You remember my Cousin Soames?"
+
+He saw her smile faintly at that whimsicality, and at once went on:
+
+"He came to see me the day before yesterday!  He wants a divorce.
+Do you?"
+
+"I?"  The word seemed startled out of her.  "After twelve years?
+It's rather late.  Won't it be difficult?"
+
+Jolyon looked hard into her face.  "Unless...."  he said.
+
+"Unless I have a lover now.  But I have never had one since."
+
+What did he feel at the simplicity and candour of those words?
+Relief, surprise, pity!  Venus for twelve years without a lover!
+
+"And yet," he said, "I suppose you would give a good deal to be
+free, too?"
+
+"I don't know.  What does it matter, now?"
+
+"But if you were to love again?"
+
+"I should love."  In that simple answer she seemed to sum up the
+whole philosophy of one on whom the world had turned its back.
+
+"Well!  Is there anything you would like me to say to him?"
+
+"Only that I'm sorry he's not free.  He had his chance once.  I
+don't know why he didn't take it."
+
+"Because he was a Forsyte; we never part with things, you know,
+unless we want something in their place; and not always then."
+
+Irene smiled.  "Don't you, Cousin Jolyon?--I think you do."
+
+"Of course, I'm a bit of a mongrel--not quite a pure Forsyte.  I
+never take the halfpennies off my cheques, I put them on," said
+Jolyon uneasily.
+
+"Well, what does Soames want in place of me now?"
+
+"I don't know; perhaps children."
+
+She was silent for a little, looking down.
+
+"Yes," she murmured; "it's hard.  I would help him to be free if I
+could."
+
+Jolyon gazed into his hat, his embarrassment was increasing fast;
+so was his admiration, his wonder, and his pity.  She was so
+lovely, and so lonely; and altogether it was such a coil!
+
+"Well," he said, "I shall have to see Soames.  If there's anything
+I can do for you I'm always at your service.  You must think of me
+as a wretched substitute for my father.  At all events I'll let you
+know what happens when I speak to Soames.  He may supply the
+material himself."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You see, he has a lot to lose; and I have nothing.  I should like
+him to be free; but I don't see what I can do."
+
+"Nor I at the moment," said Jolyon, and soon after took his leave.
+He went down to his hansom.  Half-past three!  Soames would be at
+his office still.
+
+"To the Poultry," he called through the trap.  In front of the
+Houses of Parliament and in Whitehall, newsvendors were calling,
+"Grave situation in the Transvaal!" but the cries hardly roused
+him, absorbed in recollection of that very beautiful figure, of her
+soft dark glance, and the words: "I have never had one since."
+What on earth did such a woman do with her life, back-watered like
+this?  Solitary, unprotected, with every man's hand against her or
+rather--reaching out to grasp her at the least sign.  And year
+after year she went on like that!
+
+The word 'Poultry' above the passing citizens brought him back to
+reality.
+
+'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte,' in black letters on a ground the
+colour of peasoup, spurred him to a sort of vigour, and he went up
+the stone stairs muttering: "Fusty musty ownerships!  Well, we
+couldn't do without them!"
+
+"I want Mr. Soames Forsyte," he said to the boy who opened the
+door.
+
+"What name?"
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
+
+The youth looked at him curiously, never having seen a Forsyte with
+a beard, and vanished.
+
+The offices of 'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte' had slowly absorbed
+the offices of 'Tooting and Bowles,' and occupied the whole of the
+first floor.
+
+The firm consisted now of nothing but Soames and a number of
+managing and articled clerks.  The complete retirement of James
+some six years ago had accelerated business, to which the final
+touch of speed had been imparted when Bustard dropped off, worn
+out, as many believed, by the suit of 'Fryer versus Forsyte,' more
+in Chancery than ever and less likely to benefit its beneficiaries.
+Soames, with his saner grasp of actualities, had never permitted it
+to worry him; on the contrary, he had long perceived that
+Providence had presented him therein with L200 a year net in
+perpetuity, and--why not?
+
+When Jolyon entered, his cousin was drawing out a list of holdings
+in Consols, which in view of the rumours of war he was going to
+advise his companies to put on the market at once, before other
+companies did the same.  He looked round, sidelong, and said:
+
+"How are you?  Just one minute.  Sit down, won't you?" And having
+entered three amounts, and set a ruler to keep his place, he turned
+towards Jolyon, biting the side of his flat forefinger....
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+"I have seen her."
+
+Soames frowned.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She has remained faithful to memory."   Having said that, Jolyon
+was ashamed.  His cousin had flushed a dusky yellowish red.  What
+had made him tease the poor brute!
+
+"I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free.  Twelve years is
+a long time.  You know your law, and what chance it gives you."
+Soames uttered a curious little grunt, and the two remained a full
+minute without speaking.  'Like wax!' thought Jolyon, watching that
+close face, where the flush was fast subsiding.  'He'll never give
+me a sign of what he's thinking, or going to do.  Like wax!'  And
+he transferred his gaze to a plan of that flourishing town, 'By-
+Street on Sea,' the future existence of which lay exposed on the
+wall to the possessive instincts of the firm's clients.  The whim-
+sical thought flashed through him: 'I wonder if I shall get a bill
+of costs for this--"To attending Mr. Jolyon Forsyte in the matter
+of my divorce, to receiving his account of his visit to my wife,
+and to advising him to go and see her again, sixteen and
+eightpence."'
+
+Suddenly Soames said: "I can't go on like this.  I tell you, I
+can't go on like this."  His eyes were shifting from side to side,
+like an animal's when it looks for way of escape.  'He really
+suffers,' thought Jolyon; 'I've no business to forget that, just
+because I don't like him.'
+
+"Surely," he said gently, "it lies with yourself.  A man can always
+put these things through if he'll take it on himself."
+
+Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come from
+somewhere very deep.
+
+"Why should I suffer more than I've suffered already?  Why should
+I?"
+
+Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders.  His reason agreed, his
+instinct rebelled; he could not have said why.
+
+"Your father," went on Soames, "took an interest in her--why,
+goodness knows!  And I suppose you do too?" he gave Jolyon a sharp
+look.  "It seems to me that one only has to do another person a
+wrong to get all the sympathy.  I don't know in what way I was to
+blame I've never known.  I always treated her well.  I gave her
+everything she could wish for.  I wanted her."
+
+Again Jolyon's reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head.
+'What is it?' he thought; 'there must be something wrong in me.
+Yet if there is, I'd rather be wrong than right.'
+
+"After all," said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, "she was
+my wife."
+
+In a flash the thought went through his listener: 'There it is!
+Ownerships!  Well, we all own things.  But--human beings!  Pah!'
+
+"You have to look at facts," he said drily, "or rather the want of
+them."
+
+Soames gave him another quick suspicious look.
+
+"The want of them?" he said.  "Yes, but I am not so sure."
+
+"I beg your pardon," replied Jolyon; " I've told you what she said.
+It was explicit."
+
+"My experience has not been one to promote blind confidence in her
+word.  We shall see."
+
+Jolyon got up.
+
+"Good-bye," he said curtly.
+
+"Good-bye," returned Soames; and Jolyon went out trying to
+understand the look, half-startled, half-menacing, on his cousin's
+face.  He sought Waterloo Station in a disturbed frame of mind, as
+though the skin of his moral being had been scraped; and all the
+way down in the train he thought of Irene in her lonely flat, and
+of Soames in his lonely ofce, and of the strange paralysis of life
+that lay on them both.  'In chancery!'  he thought.  'Both their
+necks in chancery--and her's so pretty!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+VAL HEARS THE NEWS
+
+
+The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous
+feature in the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke two
+and kept one; it was the latter event which caused him, if
+anything, the greater surprise, while jogging back to town from
+Robin Hill after his ride with Holly.  She had been even prettier
+than he had thought her yesterday, on her silver-roan, long-tailed
+'palfrey'; and it seemed to him, self-critical in the brumous
+October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that only his boots
+had shone throughout their two-hour companionship.  He took out his
+new gold 'hunter'--present from James--and looked not at the time,
+but at sections of his face in the glittering back of its opened
+case.  He had a temporary spot over one eyebrow, and it displeased
+him, for it must have displeased her.  Crum never had any spots.
+Together with Crum rose the scene in the promenade of the
+Pandemonium.  To-day he had not had the faintest desire to unbosom
+himself to Holly about his father.  His father lacked poetry, the
+stirrings of which he was feeling for the first time in his
+nineteen years.  The Liberty, with Cynthia Dark, that almost
+mythical embodiment of rapture; the Pandemonium, with the woman of
+uncertain age--both seemed to Val completely 'off,' fresh from
+communion with this new, shy, dark-haired young cousin of his.  She
+rode 'Jolly well,' too, so that it had been all the more flattering
+that she had let him lead her where he would in the long gallops of
+Richmond Park, though she knew them so much better than he did.
+Looking back on it all, he was mystified by the barrenness of his
+speech; he felt that he could say 'an awful lot of fetching things'
+if he had but the chance again, and the thought that he must go
+back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and to Oxford on the twelfth--
+'to that beastly exam,' too--without the faintest chance of first
+seeing her again, caused darkness to settle on his spirit even more
+quickly than on the evening.  He should write to her, however, and
+she had promised to answer.  Perhaps, too, she would come up to
+Oxford to see her brother.  That thought was like the first star,
+which came out as he rode into Padwick's livery stables in the
+purlieus of Sloane Square.  He got off and stretched himself
+luxuriously, for he had ridden some twenty-five good miles.  The
+Dartie within him made him chaffer for five minutes with young
+Padwick concerning the favourite for the Cambridgeshire; then with
+the words, "Put the gee down to my account," he walked away, a
+little wide at the knees, and flipping his boots with his knotty
+little cane.  'I don't feel a bit inclined to go out,' he thought.
+'I wonder if mother will stand fizz for my last night!'  With
+'fizz' and recollection, he could well pass a domestic evening.
+
+When he came down, speckless after his bath, he found his mother
+scrupulous in a low evening dress, and, to his annoyance, his Uncle
+Soames.  They stopped talking when he came in; then his uncle said:
+
+"He'd better be told."
+
+At those words, which meant something about his father, of course,
+Val's first thought was of Holly.  Was it anything beastly?  His
+mother began speaking.
+
+"Your father," she said in her fashionably appointed voice, while
+her fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, "your
+father, my dear boy, has--is not at Newmarket; he's on his way to
+South America.  He--he's left us."
+
+Val looked from her to Soames.  Left them!  Was he sorry?  Was he
+fond of his father?  It seemed to him that he did not know.  Then,
+suddenly--as at a whiff of gardenias and cigars--his heart twitched
+within him, and he was sorry.  One's father belonged to one, could
+not go off in this fashion--it was not done!  Nor had he always
+been the 'bounder' of the Pandemonium promenade.  There were
+precious memories of tailors' shops and horses, tips at school, and
+general lavish kindness, when in luck.
+
+"But why?" he said.  Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he had
+asked.  The mask of his mother's face was all disturbed; and he
+burst out:
+
+"All right, Mother, don't tell me!  Only, what does it mean?"
+
+"A divorce, Val, I'm afraid."
+
+Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his uncle--
+that uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a guarantee
+against the consequences of having a father, even against the
+Dartie blood in his own veins.  The flat-checked visage seemed to
+wince, and this upset him.
+
+"It won't be public, will it?"
+
+So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued
+to the unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public
+Press.
+
+"Can't it be done quietly somehow?  It's so disgusting for--for
+mother, and--and everybody."
+
+"Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure."
+
+"Yes--but, why is it necessary at all?  Mother doesn't want to
+marry again."
+
+Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his
+schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of--Holly!
+Unbearable!  What was to be gained by it?
+
+"Do you, Mother?" he said sharply.
+
+Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the
+one she loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire
+chair in which she had been sitting.  She saw that her son would be
+against her unless he was told everything; and, yet, how could she
+tell him?  Thus, still plucking at the green' brocade, she stared
+at Soames.  Val, too, stared at Soames.  Surely this embodiment of
+respectability and the sense of property could not wish to bring
+such a slur on his own sister!
+
+Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth
+surface of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his
+nephew, he began:
+
+"You don't understand what your mother has had to put up with these
+twenty years.  This is only the last straw, Val."  And glancing up
+sideways at Winifred, he added:
+
+"Shall I tell him?"
+
+Winifred was silent.  If he were not told, he would be against her!
+Yet, how dreadful to be told such things of his own father!
+Clenching her lips, she nodded.
+
+Soames spoke in a rapid, even voice:
+
+"He has always been a burden round your mother's neck.  She has
+paid his debts over and over again; he has often been drunk, abused
+and threatened her; and now he is gone to Buenos Aires with a
+dancer."  And, as if distrusting the efficacy of those words on the
+boy, he went on quickly
+
+"He took your mother's pearls to give to her."
+
+Val jerked up his hand, then.  At that signal of distress Winifred
+cried out:
+
+"That'll do, Soames-stop!"
+
+In the boy, the Dartie and the Forsyte were struggling.  For debts,
+drink, dancers, he had a certain sympathy; but the pearls-no!  That
+was too much!  And suddenly he found his mother's hand squeezing
+his.
+
+"You see," he heard Soames say, "we can't have it all begin over
+again.  There's a limit; we must strike while the iron's hot."
+
+Val freed his hand.
+
+"But--you're--never going to bring out that about the pearls!  I
+couldn't stand that--I simply couldn't!"
+
+Winifred cried out:
+
+"No, no, Val--oh no!  That's only to show you how impossible your
+father is!"  And his uncle nodded.  Somewhat assuaged, Val took out
+a cigarette.  His father had bought him that thin curved case.  Oh!
+it was unbearable--just as he was going up to Oxford!
+
+"Can't mother be protected without?" he said.  "I could look after
+her.  It could always be done later if it was really necessary."
+
+A smile played for a moment round Soames' lips, and became bitter.
+
+"You don't know what you're talking of; nothing's so fatal as delay
+in such matters."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I tell you, boy, nothing's so fatal.  I know from experience."
+
+His voice had the ring of exasperation.  Val regarded him round-
+eyed, never having known his uncle express any sort of feeling.
+Oh! Yes--he remembered now--there had been an Aunt Irene, and
+something had happened--something which people kept dark; he had
+heard his father once use an unmentionable word of her.
+
+"I don't want to speak ill of your father," Soames went on
+doggedly, "but I know him well enough to be sure that he'll be back
+on your mother's hands before a year's over.  You can imagine what
+that will mean to her and to all of you after this.  The only thing
+is to cut the knot for good."
+
+In spite of himself, Val was impressed; and, happening to look at
+his mother's face, he got what was perhaps his first real insight
+into the fact that his own feelings were not always what mattered
+most.
+
+"All right, mother," he said; "we'll back you up.  Only I'd like to
+know when it'll be.  It's my first term, you know.  I don't want to
+be up there when it comes off."
+
+"Oh! my dear boy," murmured Winifred, "it is a bore for you."  So,
+by habit, she phrased what, from the expression of her face, was
+the most poignant regret.  "When will it be, Soames?"
+
+"Can't tell--not for months.  We must get restitution first."
+
+'What the deuce is that?' thought Val.  'What silly brutes lawyers
+are!  Not for months!  I know one thing: I'm not going to dine in!'
+And he said:
+
+"Awfully sorry, mother, I've got to go out to dinner now."
+
+Though it was his last night, Winifred nodded almost gratefully;
+they both felt that they had gone quite far enough in the
+expression of feeling.
+
+Val sought the misty freedom of Green Street, reckless and
+depressed.  And not till he reached Piccadilly did he discover that
+he had only eighteen-pence.  One couldn't dine off eighteen-pence,
+and he was very hungry.  He looked longingly at the windows of the
+Iseeum Club, where he had often eaten of the best with his father!
+Those pearls!  There was no getting over them!  But the more he
+brooded and the further he walked the hungrier he naturally became.
+Short of trailing home, there were only two places where he could
+go--his grandfather's in Park Lane, and Timothy's in the Bayswater
+Road.  Which was the less deplorable?  At his grandfather's he
+would probably get a better dinner on the spur of the moment.  At
+Timothy's they gave you a jolly good feed when they expected you,
+not otherwise.  He decided on Park Lane, not unmoved by the thought
+that to go up to Oxford without affording his grandfather a chance
+to tip him was hardly fair to either of them.  His mother would
+hear he had been there, of course, and might think it funny; but he
+couldn't help that.  He rang the bell.
+
+"Hullo, Warmson, any dinner for me, d'you think?"
+
+"They're just going in, Master Val.  Mr. Forsyte will be very glad
+to see you.  He was saying at lunch that he never saw you
+nowadays."
+
+Val grinned.
+
+"Well, here I am.  Kill the fatted calf, Warmson, let's have fizz."
+
+Warmson smiled faintly--in his opinion Val was a young limb.
+
+"I will ask Mrs. Forsyte, Master Val."
+
+"I say," Val grumbled, taking off his overcoat, "I'm not at school
+any more, you know."
+
+Warmson, not without a sense of humour, opened the door beyond the
+stag's-horn coat stand, with the words:
+
+"Mr. Valerus, ma'am."
+
+"Confound him!" thought Val, entering.
+
+A warm embrace, a "Well, Val!" from Emily, and a rather quavery "So
+there you are at last!" from James, restored his sense of dignity.
+
+"Why didn't you let us know?  There's only saddle of mutton.
+Champagne, Warmson," said Emily.  And they went in.
+
+At the great dining-table, shortened to its utmost, under which so
+many fashionable legs had rested, James sat at one end, Emily at
+the other, Val half-way between them; and something of the
+loneliness of his grandparents, now that all their four children
+were flown, reached the boy's spirit.  'I hope I shall kick the
+bucket long before I'm as old as grandfather,' he thought.  'Poor
+old chap, he's as thin as a rail!'  And lowering his voice while
+his grandfather and Warmson were in discussion about sugar in the
+soup, he said to Emily:
+
+"It's pretty brutal at home, Granny.  I suppose you know."
+
+"Yes, dear boy."
+
+"Uncle Soames was there when I left.  I say, isn't there anything
+to be done to prevent a divorce?  Why is he so beastly keen on it?"
+
+"Hush, my dear!" murmured Emily; "we're keeping it from your
+grandfather."
+
+James' voice sounded from the other end.
+
+"What's that?  What are you talking about?"
+
+"About Val's college," returned Emily.  "Young Pariser was there,
+James; you remember--he nearly broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
+afterwards."
+
+James muttered that he did not know--Val must look after himself up
+there, or he'd get into bad ways.  And he looked at his grandson
+with gloom, out of which affection distrustfully glimmered.
+
+"What I'm afraid of," said Val to his plate, "is of being hard up,
+you know."
+
+By instinct he knew that the weak spot in that old man was fear of
+insecurity for his grandchildren.
+
+"Well," said James, and the soup in his spoon dribbled over,
+"you'll have a good allowance; but you must keep within it."
+
+"Of course," murmured Val; "if it is good.  How much will it be,
+Grandfather?"
+
+"Three hundred and fifty; it's too much.  I had next to nothing at
+your age."
+
+Val sighed.  He had hoped for four, and been afraid of three.  "I
+don't know what your young cousin has," said James; "he's up there.
+His father's a rich man."
+
+"Aren't you?" asked Val hardily.
+
+"I?" replied James, flustered.  "I've got so many expenses.  Your
+father...." and he was silent.
+
+"Cousin Jolyon's got an awfully jolly place.  I went down there
+with Uncle Soames--ripping stables."
+
+"Ah!" murmured James profoundly.  "That house--I knew how it would
+be!"  And he lapsed into gloomy meditation over his fish-bones.
+His son's tragedy, and the deep cleavage it had caused in the
+Forsyte family, had still the power to draw him down into a
+whirlpool of doubts and misgivings.  Val, who hankered to talk of
+Robin Hill, because Robin Hill meant Holly, turned to Emily and
+said:
+
+"Was that the house built for Uncle Soames?"  And, receiving her
+nod, went on: "I wish you'd tell me about him, Granny.  What became
+of Aunt Irene?  Is she still going?  He seems awfully worked-up
+about something to-night."
+
+Emily laid her finger on her lips, but the word Irene had caught
+James' ear.
+
+"What's that?" he said, staying a piece of mutton close to his
+lips.  "Who's been seeing her?  I knew we hadn't heard the last of
+that."
+
+"Now, James," said Emily, "eat your dinner.  Nobody's been seeing
+anybody."
+
+James put down his fork.
+
+"There you go," he said.  "I might die before you'd tell me of it.
+Is Soames getting a divorce?"
+
+"Nonsense," said Emily with incomparable aplomb; "Soames is much
+too sensible."
+
+James had sought his own throat, gathering the long white whiskers
+together on the skin and bone of it.
+
+"She--she was always...." he said, and with that enigmatic remark
+the conversation lapsed, for Warmson had returned.  But later, when
+the saddle of mutton had been succeeded by sweet, savoury, and
+dessert, and Val had received a cheque for twenty pounds and his
+grandfather's kiss--like no other kiss in the world, from lips
+pushed out with a sort of fearful suddenness, as if yielding to
+weakness--he returned to the charge in the hall.
+
+"Tell us about Uncle Soames, Granny.  Why is he so keen on mother's
+getting a divorce?"
+
+"Your Uncle Soames," said Emily, and her voice had in it an
+exaggerated assurance, "is a lawyer, my dear boy.  He's sure to
+know best."
+
+"Is he?" muttered Val.  "But what did become of Aunt Irene?  I
+remember she was jolly good-looking."
+
+"She--er...."  said Emily, "behaved very badly.  We don't talk
+about it."
+
+"Well, I don't want everybody at Oxford to know about our affairs,"
+ejaculated Val; "it's a brutal idea.  Why couldn't father be pre-
+vented without its being made public?"
+
+Emily sighed.  She had always lived rather in an atmosphere of
+divorce, owing to her fashionable proclivities--so many of those
+whose legs had been under her table having gained a certain notor-
+iety.  When, however, it touched her own family, she liked it no
+better than other people.  But she was eminently practical, and a
+woman of courage, who never pursued a shadow in preference to its
+substance.
+
+"Your mother," she said, "will be happier if she's quite free, Val.
+Good-night, my dear boy; and don't wear loud waistcoats up at
+Oxford, they're not the thing just now.  Here's a little present."
+
+With another five pounds in his hand, and a little warmth in his
+heart, for he was fond of his grandmother, he went out into Park
+Lane.  A wind had cleared the mist, the autumn leaves were
+rustling, and the stars were shining.  With all that money in his
+pocket an impulse to 'see life' beset him; but he had not gone
+forty yards in the direction of Piccadilly when Holly's shy face,
+and her eyes with an imp dancing in their gravity, came up before
+him, and his hand seemed to be tingling again from the pressure of
+her warm gloved hand.  'No, dash it!'  he thought, ' I'm going
+home!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SOAMES ENTERTAINS THE FUTURE
+
+
+It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and
+summer lingered below the yellowing leaves.  Soames took many looks
+at the day from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that Sunday
+morning.
+
+With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat, and
+equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them
+on the river.  Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he could not
+tell whether or no he wished to take Annette alone.  She was so
+very pretty--could he trust himself not to say irrevocable words,
+passing beyond the limits of discretion?  Roses on the veranda were
+still in bloom, and the hedges ever-green, so that there was almost
+nothing of middle-aged autumn to chill the mood; yet was he
+nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his powers to steer just
+the right course.  This visit had been planned to produce in
+Annette and her mother a due sense of his possessions, so that they
+should be ready to receive with respect any overture might later be
+disposed to make.  He dressed with great care, making himself
+neither too young nor too old, very thankful that his hair was
+still thick and smooth and had no grey in it.  Three times he went
+up to his picture-gallery.  If they had any knowledge at all, they
+must see at once that his collection alone was worth at least
+thirty thousand pounds.  He minutely inspected, too, the pretty
+bedroom overlooking the river where they would take off their hats.
+It would be her bedroom if--if the matter went through, and she
+became his wife.  Going up to the dressing-table he passed his hand
+over the lilac-coloured pincushion, into which were stuck all kinds
+of pins; a bowl of pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his head
+turn just a little.  His wife!  If only the whole thing could be
+settled out of hand, and there was not the nightmare of this
+divorce to be gone through first; and with gloom puckered on his
+forehead, he looked out at the river shining beyond the roses and
+the lawn.  Madame Lamotte would never resist this prospect for her
+child; Annette would never resist her mother.  If only he were
+free!  He drove to the station to meet them.  What taste French-
+women had!  Madame Lamotte was in black with touches of lilac
+colour, Annette in greyish lilac linen, with cream coloured gloves
+and hat.  Rather pale she looked and Londony; and her blue eyes
+were demure.  Waiting for them to come down to lunch, Soames stood
+in the open french-window of the diningroom moved by that sensuous
+delight in sunshine and flowers and trees which only came to the
+full when youth and beauty were there to share it with one.  He had
+ordered the lunch with intense consideration; the wine was a very
+special Sauterne, the whole appointments of the meal perfect, the
+coffee served on the veranda super-excellent.  Madame Lamotte
+accepted creme de menthe; Annette refused.  Her manners were
+charming, with just a suspicion of 'the conscious beauty' creeping
+into them.  'Yes,' thought Soames, 'another year of London and that
+sort of life, and she'll be spoiled.'
+
+Madame was in sedate French raptures.  "Adorable!  Le soleil est si
+bon!  How everything is chic, is it not, Annette?  Monsieur is a
+real Monte Cristo."  Annette murmured assent, with a look up at
+Soames which he could not read.  He proposed a turn on the river.
+But to punt two persons when one of them looked so ravishing on
+those Chinese cushions was merely to suffer from a sense of lost
+opportunity; so they went but a short way towards Pangbourne,
+drifting slowly back, with every now and then an autumn leaf
+dropping on Annette or on her mother's black amplitude.  And Soames
+was not happy, worried by the thought: 'How--when--where--can I
+say--what?' They did not yet even know that he was married.  To
+tell them he was married might jeopardise his every chance; yet, if
+he did not definitely make them understand that he wished for
+Annette's hand, it would be dropping into some other clutch before
+he was free to claim it.
+
+At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the
+Transvaal.
+
+"There'll be war," he said.
+
+Madame Lamotte lamented.
+
+"Ces pauvres gens bergers!"  Could they not be left to themselves?
+
+Soames smiled--the question seemed to him absurd.
+
+Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British could
+not abandon their legitimate commercial interests.
+
+"Ah! that!"  But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a
+little hypocrite.  They were talking of justice and the Uitlanders,
+not of business.  Monsieur was the first who had spoken to her of
+that.
+
+"The Boers are only half-civilised," remarked Soames; "they stand
+in the way of progress.  It will never do to let our suzerainty
+go."
+
+"What does that mean to say?  Suzerainty!
+
+What a strange word!  "Soames became eloquent, roused by these
+threats to the principle of possession, and stimulated by Annette's
+eyes fixed on him.  He was delighted when presently she said:
+
+"I think Monsieur is right.  They should be taught a lesson."  She
+was sensible!
+
+"Of course," he said, "we must act with moderation.  I'm no jingo.
+We must be firm without bullying.  Will you come up and see my
+pictures?"  Moving from one to another of these treasures, he soon
+perceived that they knew nothing.  They passed his last Mauve, that
+remarkable study of a 'Hay-cart going Home,' as if it were a
+lithograph.  He waited almost with awe to see how they would view
+the jewel of his collection--an Israels whose price he had watched
+ascending till he was now almost certain it had reached top value,
+and would be better on the market again.  They did not view it at
+all.  This was a shock; and yet to have in Annette a virgin taste
+to form would be better than to have the silly, half-baked pre-
+dilections of the English middle-class to deal with.  At the end of
+the gallery was a Meissonier of which he was rather ashamed--
+Meissonier was so steadily going down.  Madame Lamotte stopped
+before it.
+
+"Meissonier!  Ah! What a jewel!"  Soames took advantage of that
+moment.  Very gently touching Annette's arm, he said:
+
+"How do you like my place, Annette?"
+
+She did not shrink, did not respond; she looked at him full, looked
+down, and murmured:
+
+"Who would not like it?  It is so beautiful!"
+
+"Perhaps some day " Soames said, and stopped.
+
+So pretty she was, so self-possessed--she frightened him.  Those
+cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate
+curves--she was a standing temptation to indiscretion!  No!  No!
+One must be sure of one's ground--much surer!  'If I hold off,' he
+thought, 'it will tantalise her.'  And he crossed over to Madame
+Lamotte, who was still in front of the Meissonier.
+
+"Yes, that's quite a good example of his later work.  You must come
+again, Madame, and see them lighted up.  You must both come and
+spend a night."
+
+Enchanted, would it not be beautiful to see them lighted?  By
+moonlight too, the river must be ravishing!
+
+Annette murmured:
+
+"Thou art sentimental, Maman!"
+
+Sentimental!  That black-robed, comely, substantial Frenchwoman of
+the world!  And suddenly he was certain as he could be that there
+was no sentiment in either of them.  All the better.  Of what use
+sentiment?  And yet....!
+
+He drove to the station with them, and saw them into the train.  To
+the tightened pressure of his hand it seemed that Annette's fingers
+responded just a little; her face smiled at him through the dark.
+
+He went back to the carriage, brooding.  "Go on home, Jordan," he
+said to the coachman; "I'll walk."  And he strode out into the
+darkening lanes, caution and the desire of possession playing
+see-saw within him.  'Bon soir, monsieur!'  How softly she had said
+it.  To know what was in her mind!  The French--they were like
+cats--one could tell nothing!  But--how pretty!  What a perfect
+young thing to hold in one's arms!  What a mother for his heir!
+And he thought, with a smile, of his family and their surprise at a
+French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would play with
+it and buffet it confound them!
+
+The, poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted.  Shadows
+deepened in the water.  'I will and must be free,' he thought.  'I
+won't hang about any longer.  I'll go and see Irene.  If you want
+things done, do them yourself.  I must live again--live and move
+and have my being.'  And in echo to that queer biblicality church-
+bells chimed the call to evening prayer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AND VISITS THE PAST
+
+
+On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do
+what required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything
+he had yet undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one
+other action.  He chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene
+was more likely to be in, but mainly because he had failed to find
+sufficient resolution by daylight, had needed wine to give him
+extra daring.
+
+He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old
+Church, uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived.
+He found it hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read
+the name, 'Mrs. Irene Heron'--Heron, forsooth!  Her maiden name: so
+she used that again, did she?--he stepped back into the road to
+look up at the windows of the first floor.  Light was coming
+through in the corner fiat, and he could hear a piano being played.
+He had never had a love of music, had secretly borne it a grudge in
+the old days when so often she had turned to her piano, making of
+it a refuge place into which she knew he could not enter.  Repulse!
+The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at last open!
+Bitter memory came with that sound.  It must be she playing, and
+thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more undecided than
+ever.  Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his tongue felt
+dry, his heart beat fast.  'I have no cause to be afraid,' he
+thought.  And then the lawyer stirred within him.  Was he doing a
+foolish thing?  Ought he not to have arranged a formal meeting in
+the presence of her trustee?  No!  Not before that fellow Jolyon,
+who sympathised with her!  Never!  He crossed back into the
+doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of his heart,
+mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell.  When the
+door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by the scent
+which came--that perfume from away back in the past, bringing
+muffled remembrance: fragrance of a drawing-room he used to enter,
+of a house he used to own--perfume of dried rose-leaves and honey!
+
+"Say, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "your mistress will see me, I know."
+He had thought this out; she would think it was Jolyon!
+
+When the maid was gone and he was alone in the tiny hall, where the
+light was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls, carpet,
+everything was silvery, making the walled-in space all ghostly, he
+could only think ridiculously: 'Shall I go in with my overcoat on,
+or take it off?' The music ceased; the maid said from the doorway:
+
+"Will you walk in, sir?"
+
+Soames walked in.  He noted mechanically that all was still
+silvery, and that the upright piano was of satinwood.  She had
+risen and stood recoiled against it; her hand, placed on the keys
+as if groping for support, had struck a sudden discord, held for a
+moment, and released.  The light from the shaded piano-candle fell
+on her neck, leaving her face rather in shadow.  She was in a black
+evening dress, with a sort of mantilla over her shoulders--he did
+not remember ever having seen her in black, and the thought passed
+through him: 'She dresses even when she's alone.'
+
+"You!" he heard her whisper.
+
+Many times Soames had rehearsed this scene in fancy.  Rehearsal
+served him not at all.  He simply could not speak.  He had never
+thought that the sight of this woman whom he had once so
+passionately desired, so completely owned, and whom he had not seen
+for twelve years, could affect him in this way.  He had imagined
+himself speaking and acting, half as man of business, half as
+judge.  And now it was as if he were in the presence not of a mere
+woman and erring wife, but of some force, subtle and elusive as
+atmo-sphere itself within him and outside.  A kind of defensive
+irony welled up in him.
+
+"Yes, it's a queer visit!  I hope you're well."
+
+"Thank you.  Will you sit down?"
+
+She had moved away from the piano, and gone over to a window-seat,
+sinking on to it, with her hands clasped in her lap.  Light fell on
+her there, so that Soames could see her face, eyes, hair, strangely
+as he remembered them, strangely beautiful.
+
+He sat down on the edge of a satinwood chair, upholstered with
+silver-coloured stuff, close to where he was standing.
+
+"You have not changed," he said.
+
+"No?  What have you come for?"
+
+"To discuss things."
+
+"I have heard what you want from your cousin."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I am willing.  I have always been."
+
+The sound of her voice, reserved and close, the sight of her figure
+watchfully poised, defensive, was helping him now.  A thousand
+memories of her, ever on the watch against him, stirred, and....
+
+"Perhaps you will be good enough, then, to give me information on
+which I can act.  The law must be complied with."
+
+"I have none to give you that you don't know of.
+
+"Twelve years!  Do you suppose I can believe that?"
+
+"I don't suppose you will believe anything I say; but it's the
+truth."
+
+Soames looked at her hard.  He had said that she had not changed;
+now he perceived that she had.  Not in face, except that it was
+more beautiful; not in form, except that it was a little fuller--
+no!  She had changed spiritually.  There was more of her, as it
+were, something of activity and daring, where there had been sheer
+passive resistance.  'Ah!' he thought, 'that's her independent
+income!  Confound Uncle Jolyon!'
+
+"I suppose you're comfortably off now?" he said.
+
+"Thank you, yes."
+
+"Why didn't you let me provide for you?  I would have, in spite of
+everything."
+
+A faint smile came on her lips; but she did not answer.
+
+"You are still my wife," said Soames.  Why he said that, what he
+meant by it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after.  It was a
+truism almost preposterous, but its effect was startling.  She rose
+from the window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly still,
+looking at him.  He could see her bosom heaving.  Then she turned
+to the window and threw it open.
+
+"Why do that?" he said sharply.  "You'll catch cold in that dress.
+I'm not dangerous."  And he uttered a little sad laugh.
+
+She echoed it--faintly, bitterly.
+
+"It was--habit."
+
+"Rather odd habit," said Soames as bitterly.  "Shut the window!"
+
+She shut it and sat down again.  She had developed power, this
+woman--this--wife of his!  He felt it issuing from her as she sat
+there, in a sort of armour.  And almost unconsciously he rose and
+moved nearer; he wanted to see the expression on her face.  Her
+eyes met his unflinching.  Heavens!  how clear they were, and what
+a dark brown against that white skin, and that burnt-amber hair!
+And how white her shoulders.
+
+Funny sensation this!  He ought to hate her.
+
+"You had better tell me," he said; "it's to your advantage to be
+free as well as to mine.  That old matter is too old."
+
+"I have told you."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me there has been nothing--nobody?"
+
+"Nobody.  You must go to your own life."
+
+Stung by that retort, Soames moved towards the piano and back to
+the hearth, to and fro, as he had been wont in the old days in
+their drawing-room when his feelings were too much for him.
+
+"That won't do," he said.  "You deserted me.  In common justice
+it's for you...."
+
+He saw her shrug those white shoulders, heard her murmur:
+
+"Yes.  Why didn't you divorce me then?  Should I have cared?"
+
+He stopped, and looked at her intently with a sort of curiosity.
+What on earth did she do with herself, if she really lived quite
+alone?  And why had he not divorced her?  The old feeling that she
+had never understood him, never done him justice, bit him while he
+stared at her.
+
+"Why couldn't you have made me a good wife?" he said.
+
+"Yes; it was a crime to marry you.  I have paid for it.  You will
+find some way perhaps.  You needn't mind my name, I have none to
+lose.  Now I think you had better go."
+
+A sense of defeat--of being defrauded of his self-justification,
+and of something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset
+Soames like the breath of a cold fog.  Mechanically he reached up,
+took from the mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, and
+said:
+
+"Lowestoft.  Where did you get this?  I bought its fellow at
+Jobson's."  And, visited by the sudden memory of how, those many
+years ago, he and she had bought china together, he remained
+staring at the little bowl, as if it contained all the past.  Her
+voice roused him.
+
+"Take it.  I don't want it."
+
+Soames put it back on the shelf.
+
+"Will you shake hands?" he said.
+
+A faint smile curved her lips.  She held out her hand.  It was cold
+to his rather feverish touch.  'She's made of ice,' he thought--
+'she was always made of ice!'  But even as that thought darted
+through him, his senses were assailed by the perfume of her dress
+and body, as though the warmth within her, which had never been for
+him, were struggling to show its presence.  And he turned on his
+heel.  He walked out and away, as if someone with a whip were after
+him, not even looking for a cab, glad of the empty Embankment and
+the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows of the plane-tree
+leaves-confused, flurried, sore at heart, and vaguely disturbed, as
+though he had made some deep mistake whose consequences he could
+not foresee.  And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him
+if instead of, 'I think you had better go,' she had said, 'I think
+you had better stay!'  What should he have felt, what would he have
+done?  That cursed attraction of her was there for him even now,
+after all these years of estrangement and bitter thoughts.  It was
+there, ready to mount to his head at a sign, a touch.  'I was a
+fool to go!'  he muttered.  'I've advanced nothing.  Who could
+imagine?  I never thought!'  Memory, flown back to the first years
+of his marriage, played him torturing tricks.  She had not deserved
+to keep her beauty--the beauty he had owned and known so well.  And
+a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of his own admiration welled
+up in him.  Most men would have hated the sight of her, as she had
+deserved.  She had spoiled his life, wounded his pride to death,
+defrauded him of a son.  And yet the mere sight of her, cold and
+resisting as ever, had this power to upset him utterly!  It was
+some damned magnetism she had!  And no wonder if, as she asserted;
+she had lived untouched these last twelve years.  So Bosinney--
+cursed be his memory!--had lived on all this time with her!  Soames
+could not tell whether he was glad of that knowledge or no.
+
+Nearing his Club at last he stopped to buy a paper.  A headline
+ran: 'Boers reported to repudiate suzerainty!'  Suzerainty!  'Just
+like her!' he thought: 'she always did.  Suzerainty!  I still have
+it by rights.  She must be awfully lonely in that wretched little
+flat!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ON FORSYTE 'CHANGE
+
+
+Soames belonged to two clubs, 'The Connoisseurs,' which he put on
+his cards and seldom visited, and 'The Remove,' which he did not
+put on his cards and frequented.  He had joined this Liberal
+institution five years ago, having made sure that its members were
+now nearly all sound Conservatives in heart and pocket, if not in
+principle.  Uncle Nicholas had put him up.  The fine reading-room
+was decorated in the Adam style.
+
+On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news about
+the Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down seven-sixteenths
+since the morning.  He was turning away to seek the reading-room
+when a voice behind him said:
+
+"Well, Soames, that went off all right."
+
+It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away
+collar, with a black tie passed through a ring.  Heavens!  How
+young and dapper he looked at eighty-two!
+
+"I think Roger'd have been pleased," his uncle went on.  "The thing
+was very well done.  Blackley's?  I'll make a note of them.
+Buxton's done me no good.  These Boers are upsetting me--that
+fellow Chamberlain's driving the country into war.  What do you
+think?"
+
+"Bound to come," murmured Soames.
+
+Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, cleanshaven cheeks, very
+rosy after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his lips.
+This business had revived all his Liberal principles.
+
+"I mistrust that chap; he's a stormy petrel.  House-property will
+go down if there's war.  You'll have trouble with Roger's estate.
+I often told him he ought to get out of some of his houses.  He was
+an opinionated beggar."
+
+'There was a pair of you!' thought Soames.  But he never argued
+with an uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as 'a
+long-headed chap,' and the legal care of their property.
+
+"They tell me at Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice,
+"that Dartie has gone off at last.  That'll be a relief to your
+father.  He was a rotten egg."
+
+Again Soames nodded.  If there was a subject on which the Forsytes
+really agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.
+
+"You take care," said Nicholas, "or he'll turn up again.  Winifred
+had better have the tooth out, I should say.  No use preserving
+what's gone bad."
+
+Soames looked at him sideways.  His nerves, exacerbated by the
+interview he had just come through, disposed him to see a personal
+allusion in those words.
+
+"I'm advising her," he said shortly.
+
+"Well," said Nicholas, "the brougham's waiting; I must get home.
+I'm very poorly.  Remember me to your father."
+
+And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down the
+steps at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat by the
+junior porter.
+
+'I've never known Uncle Nicholas other than "very poorly,"' mused
+Soames, 'or seen him look other than everlasting.  What a family!
+Judging by him, I've got thirty-eight years of health before me.
+Well, I'm not going to waste them.'  And going over to a mirror he
+stood looking at his face.  Except for a line or two, and three or
+four grey hairs in his little dark moustache, had he aged any more
+than Irene?  The prime of life--he and she in the very prime of
+life!  And a fantastic thought shot into his mind.  Absurd!
+Idiotic!  But again it came.  And genuinely alarmed by the recur-
+rence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which presages a
+feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine.  Eleven stone!
+He had not varied two pounds in twenty years.  What age was she?
+Nearly thirty-seven--not too old to have a child--not at all!
+Thirty-seven on the ninth of next month.  He remembered her
+birthday well--he had always observed it religiously, even that
+last birthday so soon before she left him, when he was almost
+certain she was faithless.  Four birthdays in his house.  He had
+looked forward to them, because his gifts had meant a semblance of
+gratitude, a certain attempt at warmth.  Except, indeed, that last
+birthday--which had tempted him to be too religious!  And he shied
+away in thought.  Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds,
+from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.  And then he
+thought suddenly: 'I could send her a present for her birthday.
+After all, we're Christians!  Couldn't!--couldn't we join up
+again!'  And he uttered a deep sigh sitting there.  Annette!  Ah!
+but between him and Annette was the need for that wretched divorce
+suit!  And how?
+
+"A man can always work these things, if he'll take it on himself,"
+Jolyon had said.
+
+But why should he take the scandal on himself with his whole career
+as a pillar of the law at stake?  It was not fair!  It was quix-
+otic!  Twelve years' separation in which he had taken no steps to
+free himself put out of court the possibility of using her conduct
+with Bosinney as a ground for divorcing her.  By doing nothing to
+secure relief he had acquiesced, even if the evidence could now be
+gathered, which was more than doubtful.  Besides, his own pride
+would never let him use that old incident, he had suffered from it
+too much.  No!  Nothing but fresh misconduct on her part--but she
+had denied it; and--almost--he had believed her.  Hung up!  Utterly
+hung up!
+
+He rose from the scooped-out red velvet seat with a feeling of
+constriction about his vitals.  He would never sleep with this
+going on in him!  And, taking coat and hat again, he went out,
+moving eastward.  In Trafalgar Square he became aware of some
+special commotion travelling towards him out of the mouth of the
+Strand.  It materialised in newspaper men calling out so loudly
+that no words whatever could be heard.  He stopped to listen, and
+one came by.
+
+"Payper!  Special!  Ultimatium by Krooger!  Declaration of war!"
+Soames bought the paper.  There it was in the stop press....!  His
+first thought was: 'The Boers are committing suicide.'  His second:
+'Is there anything still I ought to sell?' If so he had missed the
+chance--there would certainly be a slump in the city to-morrow.  He
+swallowed this thought with a nod of defiance.  That ultimatum was
+insolent--sooner than let it pass he was prepared to lose money.
+They wanted a lesson, and they would get it; but it would take
+three months at least to bring them to heel.  There weren't the
+troops out there; always behind time, the Government!  Confound
+those newspaper rats!  What was the use of waking everybody up?
+Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough.  And he thought with
+alarm of his father.  They would cry it down Park Lane.  Hailing a
+hansom, he got in and told the man to drive there.
+
+James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating
+the news to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow.  He paused by
+after- thought to say:
+
+"What do you think of it, Warmson?"
+
+The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames had
+taken off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in a low
+voice: "Well, sir, they 'aven't a chance, of course; but I'm told
+they're very good shots.  I've got a son in the Inniskillings."
+
+"You, Warmson?  Why, I didn't know you were married."
+
+"No, sir.  I don't talk of it.  I expect he'll be going out."
+
+The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so
+little of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the
+slight shock of discovering that the war might touch one
+personally.  Born in the year of the Crimean War, he had only come
+to consciousness by the time the Indian Mutiny was over; since then
+the many little wars of the British Empire had been entirely
+professional, quite unconnected with the Forsytes and all they
+stood for in the body politic.  This war would surely be no
+exception.  But his mind ran hastily over his family.  Two of the
+Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other--it had
+always been a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction
+about the Yeomanry; they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform with
+silver about it, and rode horses.  And Archibald, he remembered,
+had once on a time joined the Militia, but had given it up because
+his father, Nicholas, had made such a fuss about his 'wasting his
+time peacocking about in a uniform.'  Recently he had heard
+somewhere that young Nicholas' eldest, very young Nicholas, had
+become a Volunteer.  'No,' thought Soames, mounting the stairs
+slowly, 'there's nothing in that!'
+
+He stood on the landing outside his parents' bed and dressing
+rooms, debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a
+reassuring word.  Opening the landing window, he listened.  The
+rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard, and with the
+thought, 'If these motor-cars increase, it'll affect house
+property,' he was about to pass on up to the room always kept ready
+for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse rushing call of a
+newsvendor.  There it was, and coming past the house!  He knocked
+on his mother's door and went in.
+
+His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the
+white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut.  He looked pink,
+and extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and
+pillow, out of which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned
+shoulders emerged in small peaks.  His eyes alone, grey and
+distrustful under their withered lids, were moving from the window
+to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking up and down, squeezing a
+rubber ball attached to a scent bottle.  The room reeked faintly of
+the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.
+
+"All right!" said Soames, "it's not a fire.  The Boers have
+declared war--that's all."
+
+Emily stopped her spraying.
+
+"Oh!" was all she said, and looked at James.
+
+Soames, too, looked at his father.  He was taking it differently
+from their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were
+working in him.
+
+"H'm!" he muttered suddenly, "I shan't live to see the end of
+this."
+
+"Nonsense, James!  It'll be over by Christmas."
+
+"What do you know about it?" James answered her with asperity.
+"It's a pretty mess at this time of night, too!"  He lapsed into
+silence, and his wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him to
+say: 'I can't tell--I don't know; I knew how it would be!'  But he
+did not.  The grey eyes shifted, evidently seeing nothing in the
+room; then movement occurred under the bedclothes, and the knees
+were drawn up suddenly to a great height.
+
+"They ought to send out Roberts.  It all comes from that fellow
+Gladstone and his Majuba."
+
+The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
+something of real anxiety.  It was as if he had said: 'I shall
+never see the old country peaceful and safe again.  I shall have to
+die before I know she's won.'  And in spite of the feeling that
+James must not be encouraged to be fussy, they were touched.
+Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father's hand which
+had emerged from under the bedclothes, long and wrinkled with
+veins.
+
+"Mark my words!" said James, "consols will go to par.  For all I
+know, Val may go and enlist."
+
+"Oh, come, James!" cried Emily, "you talk as if there were danger."
+
+Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.
+
+"Well," he muttered, "I told you how it would be.  I don't know,
+I'm sure nobody tells me anything.  Are you sleeping here, my boy?"
+
+The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal
+degree of anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping in
+the house, Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.
+
+The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy's had
+known for many a year.  On national occasions, such as this, it
+was, indeed, almost impossible to avoid going there.  Not that
+there was any danger or rather only just enough to make it
+necessary to assure each other that there was none.
+
+Nicholas was there early.  He had seen Soames the night before--
+Soames had said it was bound to come.  This old Kruger was in his
+dotage--why, he must be seventy-five if he was a day!
+
+(Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said?  He had had a fit
+after Majuba.  These Boers were a grasping lot!  The dark-haired
+Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the contradictious
+touch which became the free spirit of a daughter of Roger, chimed
+in:
+
+"Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas.  What price the Uitlanders?" What
+price; indeed!  A new expression, and believed to be due to her
+brother George.
+
+Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing.  Dear
+Mrs. MacAnder's boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could
+call him grasping.  At this Francie uttered one of her mots,
+scandalising, and so frequently repeated:
+
+"Well, his father's a Scotchman, and his mother's a cat."
+
+Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as
+for Nicholas, he pouted -witticism of which he was not the author
+was hardly to his taste.  Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived,
+followed almost immediately by young Nicholas.  On seeing his son,
+Nicholas rose.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said, "Nick here will tell you what'll
+win the race."  And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a pillar
+of accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was no more
+addicted to sport than his father had ever been, he departed.  Dear
+Nicholas!  What race was that?  Or was it only one of his jokes?
+He was a wonderful man for his age!  How many lumps would dear
+Marian take?  And how were Giles and Jesse?  Aunt Juley supposed
+their Yeomanry would be very busy now, guarding the coast, though
+of course the Boers had no ships.  But one never knew what the
+French might do if they had the chance, especially since that
+dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so terribly that he
+had made no investments for months afterwards.  It was the
+ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after everything had
+been done for them--Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he was so nice,
+Mrs. MacAnder had always said.  And Sir Alfred Milner sent out to
+talk to them--such a clever man!  She didn't know what they wanted.
+
+But at this moment occurred one of those sensations--so precious at
+Timothy's--which great occasions sometimes bring forth:
+
+"Miss June Forsyte."
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
+smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at
+the return of a prodigal June!  Well, this was a surprise!  Dear
+June--after all these years!  And how well she was looking!  Not
+changed at all!  It was almost on their lips to add, 'And how is
+your dear grandfather?' forgetting in that giddy moment that poor
+dear Jolyon had been in his grave for seven years now.
+
+Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June,
+with her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like
+flame, sat down, slight and short, on a gilt chair with a bead-
+worked seat, for all the world as if ten years had not elapsed
+since she had been to see them--ten years of travel and
+independence and devotion to lame ducks.  Those ducks of late had
+been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that her
+impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic
+outlook had become intense.  Indeed, she had almost ceased to
+believe that her family existed, and looked round her now with a
+sort of challenging directness which brought exquisite discomfort
+to the roomful.  She had not expected to meet any of them but 'the
+poor old things'; and why she had come to see them she hardly knew,
+except that, while on her way from Oxford Street to a studio in
+Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered them with compunction as
+two long-neglected old lame ducks.
+
+Aunt Juley broke the hush again.  "We've just been saying, dear,
+how dreadful it is about these Boers!  And what an impudent thing
+of that old Kruger!"
+
+"Impudent!" said June.  "I think he's quite right.  What business
+have we to meddle with them?  If he turned out all those wretched
+Uitlanders it would serve them right.  They're only after money."
+
+The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:
+
+"What?  Are you a pro-Boer?" (undoubtedly the first use of that
+expression).
+
+"Well!  Why can't we leave them alone?" said June, just as, in the
+open doorway, the maid said "Mr. Soames Forsyte."  Sensation on
+sensation!  Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how
+June and he would take this encounter, for it was shrewdly
+suspected, if not quite known, that they had not met since that old
+and lamentable affair of her fiance Bosinney with Soames' wife.
+They were seen to just touch each other's hands, and look each at
+the other's left eye only.  Aunt Juley came at once to the rescue:
+
+"Dear June is so original.  Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers are
+not to blame."
+
+"They only want their independence," said June; "and why shouldn't
+they have it?"
+
+"Because," answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side,
+"they happen to have agreed to our suzerainty."
+
+"Suzerainty!"repeated June scornfully; "we shouldn't like anyone's
+suzerainty over us."
+
+"They got advantages in payment," replied Soames; "a contract is a
+contract."
+
+"Contracts are not always just," fumed out June, "and when they're
+not, they ought to be broken.  The Boers are much the weaker.  We
+could afford to be generous."
+
+Soames sniffed.  "That's mere sentiment," he said.
+
+Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
+disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:
+
+"What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?"
+
+But June was not to be diverted.
+
+"I don't know why sentiment should be sneered at.  It's the best
+thing in the world."  She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley
+had to intervene again:
+
+"Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?"
+
+Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed her.
+Soames flushed.  To disclose the name of his latest purchases would
+be like walking into the jaws of disdain.  For somehow they all
+knew of June's predilection for 'genius' not yet on its legs, and
+her contempt for 'success' unless she had had a finger in securing
+it.
+
+"One or two," he muttered.
+
+But June's face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing its
+chance.  Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of Eric
+Cobbley--her last lame duck?  And she promptly opened her attack:
+Did Soames know his work?  It was so wonderful.  He was the coming
+man.
+
+Oh, yes, Soames knew his work.  It was in his view 'splashy,' and
+would never get hold of the public.
+
+June blazed up.
+
+"Of course it won't; that's the last thing one would wish for.  I
+thought you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer."
+
+"Of course Soames is a connoisseur," Aunt Juley said hastily; "he
+has wonderful taste--he can always tell beforehand what's going to
+be successful."
+
+"Oh!" gasped June, and sprang up from the bead-covered chair, "I
+hate that standard of success.  Why can't people buy things because
+they like them?"
+
+"You mean," said Francie, "because you like them."
+
+And in the slight pause young Nicholas was heard saying gently that
+Violet (his fourth) was taking lessons in pastel, he didn't know if
+they were any use.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Auntie," said June; "I must get on," and kissing
+her aunts, she looked defiantly round the room, said "Good-bye"
+again, and went.  A breeze seemed to pass out with her, as if
+everyone had sighed.
+
+The third sensation came before anyone had time to speak:
+
+"Mr. James Forsyte."
+
+James came in using a stick slightly and wrapped in a fur coat
+which gave him a fictitious bulk.
+
+Everyone stood up.  James was so old; and he had not been at
+Timothy's for nearly two years.
+
+"It's hot in here," he said.
+
+Soames divested him of his coat, and as he did so could not help
+admiring the glossy way his father was turned out.  James sat down,
+all knees, elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.
+
+"What's the meaning of that?" he said.
+
+Though there was no apparent sense in his words, they all knew that
+he was referring to June.  His eyes searched his son's face.
+
+"I thought I'd come and see for myself.  What have they answered
+Kruger?"
+
+Soames took out an evening paper, and read the headline.
+
+"'Instant action by our Government--state of war existing!'"
+
+"Ah!" said James, and sighed.  "I was afraid they'd cut and run
+like old Gladstone.  We shall finish with them this time."
+
+All stared at him.  James!  Always fussy, nervous, anxious!  James
+with his continual, ' I told you how it would be!' and his pes-
+simism, and his cautious investments.  There was something uncanny
+about such resolution in this the oldest living Forsyte.
+
+"Where's Timothy?" said James.  "He ought to pay attention to
+this."
+
+Aunt Juley said she didn't know; Timothy had not said much at lunch
+to-day.  Aunt Hester rose and threaded her way out of the room, and
+Francie said rather maliciously:
+
+"The Boers are a hard nut to crack, Uncle James."
+
+"H'm!" muttered James.  "Where do you get your information?  Nobody
+tells me."
+
+Young Nicholas remarked in his mild voice that Nick (his eldest)
+was now going to drill regularly.
+
+"Ah!" muttered James, and stared before him--his thoughts were on
+Val.  "He's got to look after his mother," he said, "he's got no
+time for drilling and that, with that father of his."  This cryptic
+saying produced silence, until he spoke again.
+
+"What did June want here?"  And his eyes rested with suspicion on
+all of them in turn.  "Her father's a rich man now."  The
+conversation turned on Jolyon, and when he had been seen last.  It
+was supposed that he went abroad and saw all sorts of people now
+that his wife was dead; his water-colours were on the line, and he
+was a successful man.  Francie went so far as to say:
+
+"I should like to see him again; he was rather a dear."
+
+Aunt Juley recalled how he had gone to sleep on the sofa one day,
+where James was sitting.  He had always been very amiable; what did
+Soames think?
+
+Knowing that Jolyon was Irene's trustee, all felt the delicacy of
+this question, and looked at Soames with interest.  A faint pink
+had come up in his cheeks.
+
+"He's going grey," he said.
+
+Indeed!  Had Soames seen him?  Soames nodded, and the pink
+vanished.
+
+James said suddenly: "Well--I don't know, I can't tell."
+
+It so exactly expressed the sentiment of everybody present that
+there was something behind everything, that nobody responded.  But
+at this moment Aunt Hester returned.
+
+"Timothy," she said in a low voice, "Timothy has bought a map, and
+he's put in--he's put in three flags."
+
+Timothy had ....!  A sigh went round the company.
+
+If Timothy had indeed put in three flags already, well!--it showed
+what the nation could do when it was roused.  The war was as good
+as over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JOLYON FINDS OUT WHERE HE IS
+
+
+Jolyon stood at the window in Holly's old night nursery, converted
+into a studio, not because it had a north light, but for its view
+over the prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom.  He shifted to
+the side window which overlooked the stableyard, and whistled down
+to the dog Balthasar who lay for ever under the clock tower.  The
+old dog looked up and wagged his tail.  'Poor old boy!'  thought
+Jolyon, shifting back to the other window.
+
+He had been restless all this week, since his attempt to prosecute
+trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever acute,
+disturbed in his sense of compassion which was easily excited, and
+with a queer sensation as if his feeling for beauty had received
+some definite embodiment.  Autumn was getting hold of the old
+oak-tree, its leaves were browning.  Sunshine had been plentiful
+and hot this summer.  As with trees, so with men's lives!  'I ought
+to live long,' thought Jolyon; 'I'm getting mildewed for want of
+heat.  If I can't work, I shall be off to Paris.'  But memory of
+Paris gave him no pleasure.  Besides, how could he go?  He must
+stay and see what Soames was going to do.  'I'm her trustee.  I
+can't leave her unprotected,' he thought.  It had been striking him
+as curious how very clearly he could still see Irene in her little
+drawing-room which he had only twice entered.  Her beauty must have
+a sort of poignant harmony!  No literal portrait would ever do her
+justice; the essence of her was--ah I what?...  The noise of hoofs
+called him back to the other window.  Holly was riding into the
+yard on her long-tailed 'palfrey.'  She looked up and he waved to
+her.  She had been rather silent lately; getting old, he supposed,
+beginning to want her future, as they all did--youngsters!
+
+Time was certainly the devil!  And with the feeling that to waste
+this swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took up
+his brush.  But it was no use; he could not concentrate his eye--
+besides, the light was going.  'I'll go up to town,' he thought.
+In the hall a servant met him.
+
+"A lady to see you, sir; Mrs. Heron."
+
+Extraordinary coincidence!  Passing into the picture-gallery, as it
+was still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window.
+
+She came towards him saying:
+
+"I've been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden.
+I always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon."
+
+"You couldn't trespass here," replied Jolyon; "history makes that
+impossible.  I was just thinking of you."
+
+Irene smiled.  And it was as if something shone through; not mere
+spirituality--serener, completer, more alluring.
+
+"History!" she answered; "I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was
+for ever.  Well, it isn't.  Only aversion lasts."
+
+Jolyon stared at her.  Had she got over Bosinney at last?
+
+"Yes!" he said, "aversion's deeper than love or hate because it's a
+natural product of the nerves, and we don't change them."
+
+"I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me.  He said a
+thing that frightened me.  He said: 'You are still my wife!'"
+
+"What!" ejaculated Jolyon.  "You ought not to live alone."  And he
+continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where
+Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was
+why so many people looked on it as immoral.
+
+"What more?"
+
+"He asked me to shake hands.
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes.  When he came in I'm sure he didn't want to; he changed while
+he was there."
+
+"Ah! you certainly ought not to go on living there alone."
+
+"I know no woman I could ask; and I can't take a lover to order,
+Cousin Jolyon."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Jolyon.  "What a damnable position!  Will you
+stay to dinner?  No?  Well, let me see you back to town; I wanted
+to go up this evening."
+
+"Truly?"
+
+"Truly.  I'll be ready in five minutes."
+
+On that walk to the station they talked of pictures and music,
+contrasting the English and French characters and the difference in
+their attitude to Art.  But to Jolyon the colours in the hedges of
+the long straight lane, the twittering of chaffinches who kept pace
+with them, the perfume of weeds being already burned, the turn of
+her neck, the fascination of those dark eyes bent on him now and
+then, the lure of her whole figure, made a deeper impression than
+the remarks they exchanged.  Unconsciously he held himself
+straighter, walked with a more elastic step.
+
+In the train he put her through a sort of catechism as to what she
+did with her days.
+
+Made her dresses, shopped, visited a hospital, played her piano,
+translated from the French.
+
+She had regular work from a publisher, it seemed, which
+supplemented her income a little.  She seldom went out in the
+evening.  "I've been living alone so long, you see, that I don't
+mind it a bit.  I believe I'm naturally solitary."
+
+"I don't believe that," said Jolyon.  "Do you know many people?"
+
+"Very few."
+
+At Waterloo they took a hansom, and he drove with her to the door
+of her mansions.  Squeezing her hand at parting, he said:
+
+"You know, you could always come to us at Robin Hill; you must let
+me know everything that happens.  Good-bye, Irene."
+
+"Good-bye," she answered softly.
+
+Jolyon climbed back into his cab, wondering why he had not asked
+her to dine and go to the theatre with him.  Solitary, starved,
+hung-up life that she had!  "Hotch Potch Club," he said through the
+trap-door.  As his hansom debouched on to the Embankment, a man in
+top-hat and overcoat passed, walking quickly, so close to the wall
+that he seemed to be scraping it.
+
+'By Jove!' thought Jolyon; 'Soames himself!  What's he up to now?'
+And, stopping the cab round the corner, he got out and retraced his
+steps to where he could see the entrance to the mansions.  Soames
+had halted in front of them, and was looking up at the light in her
+windows.  'If he goes in,' thought Jolyon, 'what shall I do?  What
+have I the right to do?'  What the fellow had said was true.  She
+was still his wife, absolutely without protection from annoyance!
+'Well, if he goes in,' he thought, 'I follow.'  And he began moving
+towards the mansions.  Again Soames advanced; he was in the very
+entrance now.  But suddenly he stopped, spun round on his heel, and
+came back towards the river.  'What now?' thought Jolyon.  'In a
+dozen steps he'll recognise me.'  And he turned tail.  His cousin's
+footsteps kept pace with his own.  But he reached his cab, and got
+in before Soames had turned the corner.  "Go on!" he said through
+the trap.  Soames' figure ranged up alongside.
+
+"Hansom!" he said.  "Engaged?  Hallo!"
+
+"Hallo!" answered Jolyon.  "You?"
+
+The quick suspicion on his cousin's face, white in the lamplight,
+decided him.
+
+"I can give you a lift," he said, "if you're going West."
+
+"Thanks," answered Soames, and got in.
+
+"I've been seeing Irene," said Jolyon when the cab had started.
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"You went to see her yesterday yourself, I understand."
+
+
+"I did," said Soames; "she's my wife, you know."
+
+The tone, the half-lifted sneering lip, roused sudden anger in
+Jolyon; but he subdued it.
+
+"You ought to know best," he said, "but if you want a divorce it's
+not very wise to go seeing her, is it?  One can't run with the hare
+and hunt with the hounds?"
+
+"You're very good to warn me," said Soames, "but I have not made up
+my mind."
+
+"She has," said Jolyon, looking straight before him; "you can't
+take things up, you know, as they were twelve years ago."
+
+"That remains to be seen."
+
+"Look here!" said Jolyon, "she's in a damnable position, and I am
+the only person with any legal say in her affairs."
+
+"Except myself," retorted Soames, "who am also in a damnable
+position.  Hers is what she made for herself; mine what she made
+for me.  I am not at all sure that in her own interests I shan't
+require her to return to me."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole body.
+
+"I don't know what you may mean by 'what,'" answered Soames coldly;
+"your say in her affairs is confined to paying out her income;
+please bear that in mind.  In choosing not to disgrace her by a
+divorce, I retained my rights, and, as I say, I am not at all sure
+that I shan't require to exercise them."
+
+"My God!" ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.
+
+"Yes," said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice.
+"I've not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, 'The man of
+property'!  I'm not called names for nothing."
+
+"This is fantastic," murmured Jolyon.  Well, the fellow couldn't
+force his wife to live with him.  Those days were past, anyway!
+And he looked around at Soames with the thought: 'Is he real, this
+man?' But Soames looked very real, sitting square yet almost
+elegant with the clipped moustache on his pale face, and a tooth
+showing where a lip was lifted in a fried smile.  There was a long
+silence, while Jolyon thought: 'Instead of helping her, I've made
+things worse.'  Suddenly Soames said:
+
+"It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many ways."
+
+At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that he
+could barely sit still in the cab.  It was as if he were boxed up
+with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with that
+something in the national character which had always been to him
+revolting, something which he knew to be extremely natural and yet
+which seemed to him inexplicable--their intense belief in contracts
+and vested rights, their complacent sense of virtue in the exaction
+of those rights.  Here beside him in the cab was the very
+embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of the possessive
+instinct--his own kinsman, too!  It was uncanny and intolerable!
+'But there's something more in it than that!' he thought with a
+sick feeling.  'The dog, they say, returns to his vomit!  The sight
+of her has reawakened something.  Beauty!  The devil's in it!'
+
+"As I say," said Soames, "I have not made up my mind.  I shall be
+obliged if you will kindly leave her quite alone."
+
+Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed
+the thought, of one now.
+
+"I can give you no such promise," he said shortly.
+
+"Very well," said Soames, "then we know where we are.  I'll get
+down here."  And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign
+of farewell.  Jolyon travelled on to his Club.
+
+The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he
+paid no attention.  What could he do to help her?  If only his
+father were alive!  He could have done so much!  But why could he
+not do all that his father could have done?  Was he not old
+enough?--turned fifty and twice married, with grown-up daughters
+and a son.  'Queer,' he thought.  'If she were plain I shouldn't be
+thinking twice about it.  Beauty is the devil, when you're sen-
+sitive to it!'  And into the Club reading-room he went with a
+disturbed heart.  In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one
+summer afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and
+secret lecture he had given that young man in the interests of
+June, the diagnosis of the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he had
+wondered what sort of woman it was he was warning him against.  And
+now!  He was almost in want of a warning himself.  'It's deuced
+funny!'  he thought, 'really deuced funny!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOAMES DISCOVERS WHAT HE WANTS
+
+
+It is so much easier to say, "Then we know where we are," than to
+mean anything particular by the words.  And in saying them Soames
+did but vent the jealous rankling of his instincts.  He got out of
+the cab in a state of wary anger--with himself for not having seen
+Irene, with Jolyon for having seen her; and now with his inability
+to tell exactly what he wanted.
+
+He had abandoned the cab because he could not bear to remain seated
+beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he thought: 'I
+wouldn't trust that fellow Jolyon a yard.  Once outcast, always
+outcast!'  The chap had a natural sympathy with--with--laxity (he
+had shied at the word sin, because it was too melodramatic for use
+by a Forsyte).
+
+Indecision in desire was to him a new feeling.  He was like a child
+between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken away
+from him; and he was astonished at himself.  Only last Sunday
+desire had seemed simple--just his freedom and Annette.  'I'll go
+and dine there,' he thought.  To see her might bring back his
+singleness of intention, calm his exasperation, clear his mind.
+
+The restaurant was fairly full--a good many foreigners and folk
+whom, from their appearance, he took to be literary or artistic.
+Scraps of conversation came his way through the clatter of plates
+and glasses.  He distinctly heard the Boers sympathised with, the
+British Government blamed.  'Don't think much of their clientele,'
+he thought.  He went stolidly through his dinner and special coffee
+without making his presence known, and when at last he had
+finished, was careful not to be seen going towards the sanctum of
+Madame Lamotte.  They were, as he entered, having supper--such a
+much nicer-looking supper than the dinner he had eaten that he felt
+a kind of grief--and they greeted him with a surprise so seemingly
+genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: 'I believe they knew
+I was here all the time.'  He gave Annette a look furtive and
+searching.  So pretty, seemingly so candid; could she be angling
+for him?  He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:
+
+"I've been dining here."
+
+Really!  If she had only known!  There were dishes she could have
+recommended; what a pity!  Soames was confirmed in his suspicion.
+'I must look out what I'm doing!' he thought sharply.
+
+"Another little cup of very special coffee, monsieur; a liqueur,
+Grand Marnier?" and Madame Lamotte rose to order these delicacies.
+
+Alone with Annette Soames said, "Well, Annette?" with a defensive
+little smile about his lips.
+
+The girl blushed.  This, which last Sunday would have set his
+nerves tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has when
+a dog that he owns wriggles and looks at him.  He had a curious
+sense of power, as if he could have said to her, 'Come and kiss
+me,' and she would have come.  And yet--it was strange--but there
+seemed another face and form in the room too; and the itch in his
+nerves, was it for that--or for this?  He jerked his head towards
+the restaurant and said: "You have some queer customers.  Do you
+like this life?"
+
+Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with
+her fork.
+
+"No," she said, "I do not like it."
+
+'I've got her,' thought Soames, 'if I want her.  But do I want
+her?' She was graceful, she was pretty--very pretty; she was fresh,
+she had taste of a kind.  His eyes travelled round the little room;
+but the eyes of his mind went another journey--a half-light, and
+silvery walls, a satinwood piano, a woman standing against it,
+reined back as it were from him--a woman with white shoulders that
+he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought to know, and hair like
+dull dark amber.  And as in an artist who strives for the
+unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him at that
+moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.
+
+"Well," he said calmly, "you're young.  There's everything before
+you."
+
+Annette shook her head.
+
+"I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work.  I am
+not so in love with work as mother."
+
+"Your mother is a wonder," said Soames, faintly mocking; "she will
+never let failure lodge in her house."
+
+Annette sighed.  "It must be wonderful to be rich."
+
+"Oh!  You'll be rich some day," answered Soames, still with that
+faint mockery; "don't be afraid."
+
+Annette shrugged her shoulders.  "Monsieur is very kind."  And
+between her pouting lips she put a chocolate.
+
+'Yes, my dear,' thought Soames, 'they're very pretty.'
+
+Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that
+colloquy.  Soames did not stay long.
+
+Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a
+feeling of property improperly owned, he mused.  If only Irene had
+given him a son, he wouldn't now be squirming after women!  The
+thought had jumped out of its little dark sentry-box in his inner
+consciousness.  A son--something to look forward to, something to
+make the rest of life worth while, something to leave himself to,
+some perpetuity of self.  'If I had a son,' he thought bitterly,
+'a proper legal son, I could make shift to go on as I used.  One
+woman's much the same as another, after all.'  But as he walked he
+shook his head.  No!  One woman was not the same as another.  Many
+a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted
+married life; and he had always failed.  He was failing now.  He
+was trying to think Annette the same as that other.  But she was
+not, she had not the lure of that old passion.  'And Irene's my
+wife,' he thought, 'my legal wife.  I have done nothing to put her
+away from me.  Why shouldn't she come back to me?  It's the right
+thing, the lawful thing.  It makes no scandal, no disturbance.  If
+it's disagreeable to her--but why should it be?  I'm not a leper,
+and she--she's no longer in love!'  Why should he be put to the
+shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of the
+Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting
+to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her?
+To one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet
+possession of his own property with nothing given away to the world
+was intensely alluring.  'No,' he mused, 'I'm glad I went to see
+that girl.  I know now what I want most.  If only Irene will come
+back I'll be as considerate as she wishes; she could live her own
+life; but perhaps--perhaps she would come round to me.'  There was
+a lump in his throat.  And doggedly along by the railings of the
+Green Park, towards his father's house, he went, trying to tread on
+his shadow walking before him in the brilliant moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE THIRD GENERATION
+
+
+Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November
+afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up.  Jolly had just changed out
+of boating flannels and was on his way to the 'Frying-pan,' to
+which he had recently been elected.  Val had just changed out of
+riding clothes and was on his way to the fire--a bookmaker's in
+Cornmarket.
+
+"Hallo!" said Jolly.
+
+"Hallo!" replied Val.
+
+The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having
+invited the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen
+each other again under somewhat exotic circumstances.
+
+Over a tailor's in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged
+young beings called minors, whose inheritances are large, whose
+parents are dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts
+are vicious.  At nineteen he had commenced one of those careers
+attractive and inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single
+bankruptcy is good as a feast.  Already famous for having the only
+roulette table then to be found in Oxford, he was anticipating his
+expectations at a dazzling rate.  He out-crummed Crum, though of a
+sanguine and rather beefy type which lacked the latter's
+fascinating languor.  For Val it had been in the nature of baptism
+to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of confirmation
+to get back into college, after hours, through a window whose bars
+were deceptive.  Once, during that evening of delight, glancing up
+from the seductive green before him, he had caught sight, through a
+cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite.  'Rouge gagne,
+impair, et manque!'  He had not seen him again.
+
+"Come in to the Frying-pan and have tea," said Jolly, and they went
+in.
+
+A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an unseizable
+resemblance between these second cousins of the third generations
+of Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though Jolly's eyes
+were darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy.
+
+"Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please," said Jolly.
+
+"Have one of my cigarettes?" said Val.  "I saw you last night.  How
+did you do?"
+
+"I didn't play."
+
+"I won fifteen quid."
+
+Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had
+once heard his father make--'When you're fleeced you're sick, and
+when you fleece you're sorry--Jolly contented himself with:
+
+"Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap.  He's an
+awful fool."
+
+"Oh! I don't know," said Val, as one might speak in defence of a
+disparaged god; "he's a pretty good sport."
+
+They exchanged whiffs in silence.
+
+"You met my people, didn't you?" said Jolly.  "They're coming up
+to-morrow."
+
+Val grew a little red.
+
+"Really!  I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester
+November handicap."
+
+"Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races."
+
+"You can't make any money over them," said Val.
+
+"I hate the ring," said Jolly; "there's such a row and stink.  I
+like the paddock."
+
+"I like to back my judgment,"' answered Val.
+
+Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father's.
+
+"I haven't got any.  I always lose money if I bet."
+
+"You have to buy experience, of course."
+
+"Yes, but it's all messed-up with doing people in the eye."
+
+"Of course, or they'll do you--that's the excitement."
+
+Jolly looked a little scornful.
+
+"What do you do with yourself?  Row?"
+
+"No--ride, and drive about.  I'm going to play polo next term, if I
+can get my granddad to stump up."
+
+"That's old Uncle James, isn't it?  What's he like?"
+
+"Older than forty hills," said Val, "and always thinking he's going
+to be ruined."
+
+"I suppose my granddad and he were brothers."
+
+"I don't believe any of that old lot were sportsmen," said Val;
+they must have worshipped money."
+
+"Mine didn't!" said Jolly warmly.
+
+Val flipped the ash off his cigarette.
+
+"Money's only fit to spend," he said; "I wish the deuce I had
+more."
+
+Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had
+inherited from old Jolyon: One didn't talk about money!  And again
+there was silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered buns.
+
+"Where are your people going to stay?" asked Val, elaborately
+casual.
+
+"'Rainbow.'  What do you think of the war?"
+
+"Rotten, so far.  The Boers aren't sports a bit.  Why don't they
+come out into the open?"
+
+"Why should they?  They've got everything against them except their
+way of fighting.  I rather admire them."
+
+"They can ride and shoot," admitted Val, "but they're a lousy lot.
+Do you know Crum?"
+
+"Of Merton?  Only by sight.  He's in that fast set too, isn't he?
+Rather La-di-da and Brummagem."
+
+Val said fixedly: "He's a friend of mine."
+
+"Oh! Sorry!"  And they sat awkwardly staring past each other,
+having pitched on their pet points of snobbery.  For Jolly was
+forming himself unconsciously on a set whose motto was:
+
+'We defy you to bore us.  Life isn't half long enough, and we're
+going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and
+dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine.  We are
+"the best"--made of wire and whipcord.'  And Val was unconsciously
+forming himself on a set whose motto was: 'We defy you to interest
+or excite us.  We have had every sensation, or if we haven't, we
+pretend we have.  We are so exhausted with living that no hours are
+too small for us.  We will lose our shirts with equanimity.  We
+have flown fast and are past everything.  All is cigarette smoke.
+Bismillah!'  Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the English, was
+obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the close
+of a century ideals are mixed.  The aristocracy had already in the
+main adopted the 'jumping-Jesus' principle; though here and there
+one like Crum--who was an 'honourable'--stood starkly languid for
+that gambler's Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old
+'dandies' and of 'the mashers' in the eighties.  And round Crum
+were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a
+plutocratic following.
+
+But there was between the cousins another far less obvious
+antipathy--coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which
+each perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old
+feud persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed
+within them by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders.
+And Jolly, tinkling his teaspoon, was musing: 'His tie-pin and his
+waistcoat and his drawl and his betting--good Lord!'
+
+And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: 'He's rather a young
+beast!'
+
+"I suppose you'll be meeting your people?" he said, getting up.
+"I wish you'd tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.--not
+that there's anything much there--if they'd care to come."
+
+"Thanks, I'll ask them."
+
+"Would they lunch?  I've got rather a decent scout."
+
+Jolly doubted if they would have time.
+
+"You'll ask them, though?"
+
+"Very good of you," said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not
+go; but, instinctively polite, he added: "You'd better come and
+have dinner with us to-morrow."
+
+"Rather.  What time?"
+
+"Seven-thirty."
+
+"Dress?"
+
+"No."  And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.
+
+Holly and her father arrived by a midday train.  It was her first
+visit to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent,
+looking almost shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful
+place.  After lunch she wandered, examining his household gods with
+intense curiosity.  Jolly's sitting-room was panelled, and Art
+represented by a set of Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old
+Jolyon, and by college photographs--of young men, live young men, a
+little heroic, and to be compared with her memories of Val.  Jolyon
+also scrutinised with care that evidence of his boy's character and
+tastes.
+
+Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set
+forth to the river.  Holly, between her brother and her father,
+felt elated when heads were turned and eyes rested on her.  That
+they might see him to the best advantage they left him at the Barge
+and crossed the river to the towing-path.  Slight in build--for of
+all the Forsytes only old Swithin and George were beefy--Jolly was
+rowing 'Two' in a trial eight.  He looked very earnest and
+strenuous.  With pride Jolyon thought him the best-looking boy of
+the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck by one or two
+of the others, but would not have said so for the world.  The river
+was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still
+beautiful with colour.  Distinguished peace clung around the old
+city; Jolyon promised himself a day's sketching if the weather
+held.  The Eight passed a second time, spurting home along the
+Barges--Jolly's face was very set, so as not to show that he was
+blown.  They returned across the river and waited for him.
+
+"Oh!" said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, "I had to ask that
+chap Val Dartie to dine with us to-night.  He wanted to give you
+lunch and show you B.N.C., so I thought I'd better; then you
+needn't go.  I don't like him much."
+
+Holly's rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh! I don't know.  He seems to me rather showy and bad form.  What
+are his people like, Dad?  He's only a second cousin, isn't he?"
+
+Jolyon took refuge in a smile.
+
+"Ask Holly," he said; "she saw his uncle."
+
+"I liked Val," Holly answered, staring at the ground before her;
+"his uncle looked--awfully different."  She stole a glance at Jolly
+from under her lashes.
+
+"Did you ever," said Jolyon with whimsical intention, "hear our
+family history, my dears?  It's quite a fairy tale.  The first
+Jolyon Forsyte--at all events the first we know anything of, and
+that would be your great-great-grandfather--dwelt in the land of
+Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an
+'agriculturalist,' as your great-aunt put it, and the son of an
+agriculturist--farmers, in fact; your grandfather used to call
+them, 'Very small beer,'"  He looked at Jolly to see how his
+lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly's
+malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother's face.
+
+"We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it
+was before the Industrial Era began.  The second Jolyon Forsyte--
+your great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset
+Forsyte--built houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children,
+and migrated to London town.  It is known that he drank sherry.  We
+may suppose him representing the England of Napoleon's wars, and
+general unrest.  The eldest of his six sons was the third Jolyon,
+your grandfather, my dears--tea merchant and chairman of companies,
+one of the soundest Englishmen who ever lived--and to me the
+dearest."  Jolyon's voice had lost its irony, and his son and
+daughter gazed at him solemnly, "He was just and tenacious, tender
+and young at heart.  You remember him, and I remember him.  Pass to
+the others!  Your great-uncle James, that's young Val's grand-
+father, had a son called Soames--whereby hangs a tale of no love
+lost, and I don't think I'll tell it you.  James and the other
+eight children of 'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five
+alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its
+principles of trade and individualism at five per cent. and your
+money back--if you know what that means.  At all events they've
+turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in
+the course of their long lives.  They never did a wild thing--
+unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe was once
+swindled at thimble-rig, and was called 'Four-in-hand Forsyte'
+because he drove a pair.  Their day is passing, and their type, not
+altogether for the advantage of the country.  They were pedestrian,
+but they too were sound.  I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte--a poor
+holder of the name--"
+
+"No, Dad," said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand.
+
+"Yes," repeated Jolyon, "a poor specimen, representing, I'm afraid,
+nothing but the end of the century, unearned income, amateurism,
+and individual liberty--a different thing from individualism,
+Jolly.  You are the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man, and you open the
+ball of the new century."
+
+As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly
+said: "It's fascinating, Dad."
+
+None of them quite knew what she meant.  Jolly was grave.
+
+The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for
+lack of modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-
+room, in which Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone,
+when the only guest arrived.  Rather as one would touch a moth, Val
+took her hand.  And wouldn't she wear this 'measly flower'?  It
+would look ripping in her hair.  He removed a gardenia from his
+coat.
+
+"Oh!  No, thank you--I couldn't!"  But she took it and pinned it at
+her neck, having suddenly remembered that word 'showy'!  Val's
+buttonhole would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like
+him.  Did she realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her
+presence, and was that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction
+for her?
+
+"I never said anything about our ride, Val."
+
+"Rather not!  It's just between us."
+
+By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was
+giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too--the
+wish to make him happy.
+
+"Do tell me about Oxford.  It must be ever so lovely."
+
+Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked;
+the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps.
+"Only," he added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could come
+down and see you."
+
+Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.
+
+"You haven't forgotten," he said, suddenly gathering courage, "that
+we're going mad-rabbiting together?"
+
+Holly smiled.
+
+"Oh!  That was only make-believe.  One can't do that sort of thing
+after one's grown up, you know."
+
+"Dash it!  cousins can," said Val.  "Next Long Vac.--it begins in
+June, you know, and goes on for ever--we'll watch our chance."
+
+But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly
+shook her head.  "It won't come off," she murmured.
+
+"Won't it!" said Val fervently; "who's going to stop it?  Not your
+father or your brother."
+
+At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into
+Val's patent leather and Holly's white satin toes, where it itched
+and tingled during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness.
+
+Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism
+between the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became un-
+consciously ironical, which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth.
+A letter, handed to him after dinner, reduced him to a silence
+hardly broken till Jolly and Val rose to go.  He went out with
+them, smoking his cigar, and walked with his son to the gates of
+Christ Church.  Turning back, he took out the letter and read it
+again beneath a lamp.
+
+
+"DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"Soames came again to-night--my thirty-seventh birthday.  You were
+right, I mustn't stay here.  I'm going to-morrow to the Piedmont
+Hotel, but I won't go abroad without seeing you.  I feel lonely and
+down-hearted.
+
+"Yours affectionately,
+
+"IRENE."
+
+
+He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished
+at the violence of his feelings.  What had the fellow said or done?
+
+He turned, into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of
+spires and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or
+darkshadowed in the strong moonlight.  In this very heart of
+England's gentility it was difficult to realise that a lonely woman
+could be importuned or hunted, but what else could her letter mean?
+Soames must have been pressing her to go back to him again, with
+public opinion and the Law on his side, too!  'Eighteen-ninety-
+nine!,' he thought, gazing at the broken glass shining on the top
+of a villa garden wall; 'but when it comes to property we're still
+a heathen people!  I'll go up to-morrow morning.  I dare say it'll
+be best for her to go abroad.'  Yet the thought displeased him.
+Why should Soames hunt her out of England!  Besides, he might
+follow, and out there she would be still more helpless against the
+attentions of her own husband!  'I must tread warily,' he thought;
+'that fellow could make himself very nasty.  I didn't like his
+manner in the cab the other night.'  His thoughts turned to his
+daughter June.  Could she help?  Once on a time Irene had been her
+greatest friend, and now she was a 'lame duck,' such as must appeal
+to June's nature!  He determined to wire to his daughter to meet
+him at Paddington Station.  Retracing his steps towards the Rainbow
+he questioned his own sensations.  Would he be upsetting himself
+over every woman in like case?  No! he would not.  The candour of
+this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had gone
+up to bed, he sought his own room.  But he could not sleep, and sat
+for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the
+moonlight on the roofs.
+
+Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and
+below Val's eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to
+make Jolly like him better.  The scent of the gardenia was strong
+in her little bedroom, and pleasant to her.
+
+And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was
+gazing at a moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing
+instead Holly, slim and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire
+when he first went in.
+
+But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand
+beneath his cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a
+race against him, while his father was calling from the towpath:
+'Two!  Get your hands away there, bless you!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SOAMES PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH
+
+
+Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the
+West End of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames
+the most 'attractive' word just coming into fashion.  He had never
+had his Uncle Swithin's taste in precious stones, and the
+abandonment by Irene when she left his house in 1887 of all the
+glittering things he had given her had disgusted him with this form
+of invest-ment.  But he still knew a diamond when he saw one, and
+during the week before her birthday he had taken occasion, on his
+way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally a little
+before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one's money's
+worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods.
+
+Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him
+more and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his life,
+the supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong.  And,
+alongside the dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never with
+his self-preservation, now or never if he were to range himself and
+found a family, went the secret urge of his senses roused by the
+sight of her who had once been a passionately desired wife, and the
+conviction that it was a sin against common sense and the decent
+secrecy of Forsytes to waste the wife he had.
+
+In an opinion on Winifred's case, Dreamer, Q.C.--he would much have
+preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late in the
+day as to rouse the usual suspicion of a political job)--had
+advised that they should go forward and obtain restitution of
+conjugal rights, a point which to Soames had never been in doubt.
+When they had obtained a decree to that effect they must wait to
+see if it was obeyed.  If not, it would constitute legal desertion,
+and they should obtain evidence of misconduct and file their
+petition for divorce.  All of which Soames knew perfectly well.
+They had marked him ten and one.  This simplicity in his sister's
+case only made him the more desperate about the difficulty in his
+own.  Everything, in fact, was driving him towards the simple
+solution of Irene's return.  If it were still against the grain
+with her, had he not feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to
+forget?  He at least had never injured her, and this was a world of
+compromise!  He could offer her so much more than she had now.  He
+would be prepared to make a liberal settlement on her which could
+not be upset.  He often scrutinised his image in these days.  He
+had never been a peacock like that fellow Dartie, or fancied
+himself a woman's man, but he had a certain belief in his own
+appearance--not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved,
+neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind.
+The Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his
+eyes, virtues.  So far as he could tell there was no feature of him
+which need inspire dislike.
+
+Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural,
+even if far-fetched in their inception.  If he could only give
+tangible proof enough of his determination to let bygones be
+bygones, and to do all in his power to please her, why should she
+not come back to him?
+
+He entered Gaves and Cortegal's therefore, on the morning of
+November the 9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch.  "Four
+twenty-five and dirt cheap, sir, at the money.  It's a lady's
+brooch."  There was that in his mood which made him accept without
+demur.  And he went on into the Poultry with the flat green morocco
+case in his breast pocket.  Several times that day he opened it to
+look at the seven soft shining stones in their velvet oval nest.
+
+"If the lady doesn't like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time.
+But there's no fear of that."  If only there were not!  He got
+through a vast amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew.
+A cablegram came while he was in the office with details from the
+agent in Buenos Aires, and the name and address of a stewardess who
+would be prepared to swear to what was necessary.  It was a timely
+spur to Soames, with his rooted distaste for the washing of dirty
+linen in public.  And when he set forth by Underground to Victoria
+Station he received a fresh impetus towards the renewal of his
+married life from the account in his evening paper of a fashionable
+divorce suit.  The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety
+and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and
+solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane.  He neither could nor
+would breath a word to his people of his intention--too reticent
+and proud--but the thought that at least they would be glad if they
+knew, and wish him luck, was heartening.
+
+James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of
+Kruger's ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor
+success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in The
+Times.  He didn't know where it would end.  Soames sought to cheer
+him by the continual use of the word Buller.  But James couldn't
+tell!  There was Colley--and he got stuck on that hill, and this
+Ladysmith was down in a hollow, and altogether it looked to him a
+'pretty kettle of fish'; he thought they ought to be sending the
+sailors--they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea.
+Soames shifted the ground of consolation.  Winifred had heard from
+Val that there had been a 'rag' and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at
+Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face.
+
+"Ah!" James muttered, "he's a clever little chap."  But he shook
+his head shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn't know what
+would become of him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on
+that Soames had never had a boy.  He would have liked a grandson of
+his own name.  And now--well, there it was!
+
+Soames flinched.  He had not expected such a challenge to disclose
+the secret in his heart.  And Emily, who saw him wince, said:
+
+"Nonsense, James; don't talk like that!"
+
+But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on.  There were
+Roger and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons.  And Swithin
+and Timothy had never married.  He had done his best; but he would
+soon be gone now.  And, as though he had uttered words of profound
+consolation, he was silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece
+of bread, and swallowing the bread.
+
+Soames excused himself directly after dinner.  It was not really
+cold, but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him
+against the fits of nervous shivering to which he had been subject
+all day.  Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than
+in an ordinary black overcoat.  Then, feeling the morocco case flat
+against his heart, he sallied forth.  He was no smoker, but he lit
+a cigarette, and smoked it gingerly as he walked along.  He moved
+slowly down the Row towards Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to
+Chelsea at nine-fifteen.  What did she do with herself evening
+after evening in that little hole?  How mysterious women were!  One
+lived alongside and knew nothing of them.  What could she have seen
+in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad?  For there was madness
+after all in what she had done--crazy moonstruck madness, in which
+all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his life
+ruined!  And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation,
+as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the
+Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence,
+forgiving and forgetting, and becoming  the godfather of her
+future.  Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the
+moon-light struck down clear and white, he took out once more the
+morocco case, and let the beams draw colour from those stones.
+Yes, they were of the first water!  But, at the hard closing snap
+of the case, another cold shiver ran through his nerves; and he
+walked on faster, clenching his gloved hands in the pockets of his
+coat, almost hoping she would not be in.  The thought of how
+mysterious she was again beset him.  Dining alone there night after
+night--in an evening dress, too, as if she were making believe to
+be in society!  Playing the piano--to herself!  Not even a dog or
+cat, so far as he had seen.  And that reminded him suddenly of the
+mare he kept for station work at Mapledurham.  If ever he went to
+the stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her
+home journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if longing
+to be back and lonely in her stable!  'I would treat her well,' he
+thought incoherently.  'I would be very careful.'  And all that
+capacity for home life of which a mocking Fate seemed for ever to
+have deprived him swelled suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed
+dreams opposite South Kensington Station.  In the King's Road a man
+came slithering out of a public house playing a concertina.  Soames
+watched him for a moment dance crazily on the pavement to his own
+drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with
+this piece of drunken foolery.  A night in the lock-up!  What asses
+people were!  But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance,
+and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street.
+'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously.  'To have
+ruffians like that about, with women out alone!'  A woman's figure
+in front had induced this thought.  Her walk seemed oddly familiar,
+and when she turned the corner for which he was bound, his heart
+began to, beat.  He hastened on to the corner to make certain.
+Yes!  It was Irene; he could not mistake her walk in that little
+drab street.  She threaded two more turnings, and from the last
+corner he saw her enter her block of flats.  To make sure of her
+now, he ran those few paces, hurried up the stairs, and caught her
+standing at her door.  He heard the latchkey in the lock, and
+reached her side just as she turned round, startled, in the open
+doorway.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," he said, breathless.  "I happened to see you.
+Let me come in a minute."
+
+She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless, her
+eyes widened by alarm.  Then seeming to master herself, she
+inclined her head, and said: "Very well."
+
+Soames closed the door.  He, too, had need to recover, and when she
+had passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute, taking deep
+breaths to still the beating of his heart.  At this moment, so
+fraught with the future, to take out that morocco case seemed
+crude.  Yet, not to take it out left him there before her with no
+preliminary excuse for coming.  And in this dilemma he was seized
+with impatience at all this paraphernalia of excuse and
+justification.  This was a scene--it could be nothing else, and he
+must face it.  He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically
+soft:
+
+"Why have you come again?  Didn't you understand that I would
+rather you did not?"
+
+He noticed her clothes--a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa,
+a small round toque of the same.  They suited her admirably.  She
+had money to spare for dress, evidently!  He said abruptly:
+
+"It's your birthday.  I brought you this," and he held out to her
+the green morocco case.
+
+"Oh!  No-no!"
+
+Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale
+grey velvet.
+
+"Why not?" he said.  "Just as a sign that you don't bear me ill-
+feeling any longer."
+
+"I couldn't."
+
+Soames took it out of the case.
+
+"Let me just see how it looks."
+
+She shrank back.
+
+He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the
+front of her dress.  She shrank again.
+
+Soames dropped his hand.
+
+"Irene," he said, "let bygones be bygones.  If I can, surely you
+might.  Let's begin again, as if nothing had been.  Won't you?"
+His voice was wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in
+them a sort of supplication.
+
+She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall,
+gave a little gulp, and that was all her answer.  Soames went on:
+
+"Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little
+hole?  Come back to me, and I'll give you all you want.  You shall
+live your own life; I swear it."
+
+He saw her face quiver ironically.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, "but I mean it this time.  I'll only ask one
+thing.  I just want--I just want a son.  Don't look like that!  I
+want one.  It's hard."  His voice had grown hurried, so that he
+hardly knew it for his own, and twice he jerked his head back as if
+struggling for breath.  It was the sight of her eyes fixed on him,
+dark with a sort of fascinated fright, which pulled him together
+and changed that painful incoherence to anger.
+
+"Is it so very unnatural?" he said between his teeth, "Is it
+unnatural to want a child from one's own wife?  You wrecked our
+life and put this blight on everything.  We go on only half alive,
+and without any future.  Is it so very unflattering to you that in
+spite of everything I--I still want you for my wife?  Speak, for
+Goodness' sake! do speak."
+
+Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.
+
+"I don't want to frighten you," said Soames more gently.  "Heaven
+knows.  I only want you to see that I can't go on like this.  I
+want you back.  I want you."
+
+Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but
+her eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to
+keep him at bay.  And all those years, barren and bitter, since--
+ah!  when?--almost since he had first known her, surged up in one
+great wave of recollection in Soames; and a spasm that for his life
+he could not control constricted his face.
+
+"It's not too late," he said; "it's not--if you'll only believe
+it."
+
+Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing
+gesture in front of her breast.  Soames seized them.
+
+"Don't!" she said under her breath.  But he stood holding on to
+them, trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver.  Then she
+said quietly:
+
+"I am alone here.  You won't behave again as you once behaved."
+
+Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned
+away.  Was it possible that there could be such relentless
+unforgiveness!  Could that one act of violent possession be still
+alive within her?  Did it bar him thus utterly?  And doggedly he
+said, without looking up:
+
+"I am not going till you've answered me.  I am offering what few
+men would bring themselves to offer, I want a--a reasonable
+answer."
+
+And almost with surprise he heard her say:
+
+"You can't have a reasonable answer.  Reason has nothing to do with
+it.  You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die."
+
+Soames stared at her.
+
+"Oh!" he said.  And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of
+speech and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man
+has received a deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is going
+to take it, or rather what it is going to do with him.
+
+"Oh!" he said again, "as bad as that?  Indeed!  You would rather
+die.  That's pretty!"
+
+"I am sorry.  You wanted me to answer.  I can't help the truth, can
+I?"
+
+At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to
+actuality.  He snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in
+his pocket.
+
+"The truth!" he said; "there's no such thing with women.  It's
+nerves-nerves."
+
+He heard the whisper:
+
+"Yes; nerves don't lie.  Haven't you discovered that?" He was
+silent, obsessed by the thought: 'I will hate this woman.  I will
+hate her.'  That was the trouble!  If only he could!  He shot a
+glance at her who stood unmoving against the wall with her head up
+and her hands clasped, for all the world as if she were going to be
+shot.  And he said quickly:
+
+"I don't believe a word of it.  You have a lover.  If you hadn't,
+you wouldn't be such a--such a little idiot."  He was conscious,
+before the expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of
+a non-sequitur, and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal
+freedom of his connubial days.  He turned away to the door.  But he
+could not go out.  Something within him--that most deep and secret
+Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the impossibility
+of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his own tenacity--
+prevented him.  He turned about again, and there stood, with his
+back against the door, as hers was against the wall opposite, quite
+unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by the whole
+width of the room.
+
+"Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?" he said.
+
+Irene's lips quivered; then she answered slowly:
+
+"Do you ever think that I found out my mistake--my hopeless,
+terrible mistake--the very first week of our marriage; that I went
+on trying three years--you know I went on trying?  Was it for
+myself?"
+
+Soames gritted his teeth.  "God knows what it was.  I've never
+understood you; I shall never understand you.  You had everything
+you wanted; and you can have it again, and more.  What's the matter
+with me?  I ask you a plain question: What is it?"  Unconscious of
+the pathos in that enquiry, he went on passionately: "I'm not lame,
+I'm not loathsome, I'm not a boor, I'm not a fool.  What is it?
+What's the mystery about me?"
+
+Her answer was a long sigh.
+
+He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full
+of expression.  "When I came here to-night I was--I hoped--I meant
+everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair
+again.  And you meet me with 'nerves,' and silence, and sighs.
+There's nothing tangible.  It's like--it's like a spider's web."
+
+"Yes."
+
+That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.
+
+"Well, I don't choose to be in a spider's web.  I'll cut it."  He
+walked straight up to her.  "Now!"  What he had gone up to her to
+do he really did not know.  But when he was close, the old familiar
+scent of her clothes suddenly affected him.  He put his hands on
+her shoulders and bent forward to kiss her.  He kissed not her
+lips, but a little hard line where the lips had been drawn in; then
+his face was pressed away by her hands; he heard her say: "Oh!
+No!"  Shame, compunction, sense of futility flooded his whole
+being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+VISIT TO IRENE
+
+
+Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington.  She had
+received his telegram while at breakfast.  Her abode--a studio and
+two bedrooms in a St. John's Wood garden--had been selected by her
+for the complete independence which it guaranteed.  Unwatched by
+Mrs. Grundy, unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive
+lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck
+without studio of its own made use of June's.  She enjoyed her
+freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the
+warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which--
+given her Forsyte tenacity--he must surely have tired, she now
+expended in championship of the underdogs and budding 'geniuses' of
+the artistic world.  She lived, in fact, to turn ducks into the
+swans she believed they were.  The very fervour of her protection
+warped her judgments.  But she was loyal and liberal; her small
+eager hand was ever against the oppressions of academic and
+commercial opinion, and though her income was considerable, her
+bank balance was often a minus quantity.
+
+She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit to
+Eric Cobbley.  A miserable Gallery had refused to let that
+straight-haired genius have his one-man show after all.  Its
+impudent manager, after visiting his studio, had expressed the
+opinion that it would only be a 'one-horse show from the selling
+point of view.'  This crowning example of commercial cowardice
+towards her favourite lame duck--and he so hard up, with a wife and
+two children, that he had caused her account to be overdrawn--was
+still making the blood glow in her small, resolute face, and her
+red-gold hair to shine more than ever.  She gave her father a hug,
+and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as
+he with her.  It became at once a question which would fry them
+first.
+
+Jolyon had reached the words: "My dear, I want you to come with
+me," when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes
+moving from side to side--like the tail of a preoccupied cat that
+she was not attending.  "Dad, is it true that I absolutely can't
+get at any of my money?"
+
+"Only the income, fortunately, my love."
+
+"How perfectly beastly!  Can't it be done somehow?  There must be a
+way.  I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds."
+
+"A small Gallery," murmured Jolyon, "seems a modest desire.  But
+your grandfather foresaw it."
+
+"I think," cried June vigorously, "that all this care about money
+is awful, when there's so much genius in the world simply crushed
+out for want of a little.  I shall never marry and have children;
+why shouldn't I be able to do some good instead of having it all
+tied up in case of things which will never come off?"
+
+"Our name is Forsyte, my dear," replied Jolyon in the ironical
+voice to which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown
+accustomed; "and Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle their
+property that their grandchildren, in case they should die before
+their parents, have to make wills leaving the property that will
+only come to themselves when their parents die.  Do you follow
+that?  Nor do I, but it's a fact, anyway; we live by the principle
+that so long as there is a possibility of keeping wealth in the
+family it must not go out; if you die unmarried, your money goes to
+Jolly and Holly and their children if they marry.  Isn't it
+pleasant to know that whatever you do you can none of you be
+destitute?"
+
+"But can't I borrow the money?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head.  "You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if you
+could manage it out of your income."
+
+June uttered a contemptuous sound.
+
+"Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with."
+
+"My dear child," murmured Jolyon, "wouldn't it come to the same
+thing?"
+
+"No," said June shrewdly, "I could buy for ten thousand; that would
+only be four hundred a year.  But I should have to pay a thousand a
+year rent, and that would only leave me five hundred.  If I had the
+Gallery, Dad, think what I could do.  I could make Eric Cobbley's
+name in no time, and ever so many others."
+
+"Names worth making make themselves in time."
+
+"When they're dead."
+
+"Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having his
+name made?"
+
+"Yes, you," said June, pressing his arm.
+
+Jolyon started.  'I?' he thought.  'Oh!  Ah!  Now she's going to
+ask me to do something.  We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our
+different ways.'
+
+June came closer to him in the cab.
+
+"Darling," she said, "you buy the Gallery, and I'll pay you four
+hundred a year for it.  Then neither of us will be any the worse
+off.  Besides, it's a splendid investment."
+
+Jolyon wriggled.  "Don't you think," he said, "that for an artist
+to buy a Gallery is a bit dubious?  Besides, ten thousand pounds is
+a lump, and I'm not a commercial character."
+
+June looked at him with admiring appraisement.
+
+"Of course you're not, but you're awfully businesslike.  And I'm
+sure we could make it pay.  It'll be a perfect way of scoring off
+those wretched dealers and people."  And again she squeezed her
+father's arm.
+
+Jolyon's face expressed quizzical despair.
+
+"Where is this desirable Gallery?  Splendidly situated, I suppose?"
+
+"Just off Cork Street."
+
+'Ah!'  thought Jolyon, 'I knew it was just off somewhere.  Now for
+what I want out of her!'
+
+"Well, I'll think of it, but not just now.  You remember Irene?  I
+want you to come with me and see her.  Soames is after her again.
+She might be safer if we could give her asylum somewhere."
+
+The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most
+calculated to rouse June's interest.
+
+"Irene!  I haven't seen her since!  Of course!  I'd love to help
+her."
+
+It was Jolyon's turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for
+this spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting.
+
+"Irene is proud," he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden doubt
+of June's discretion; "she's difficult to help.  We must tread
+gently.  This is the place.  I wired her to expect us.  Let's send
+up our cards."
+
+"I can't bear Soames," said June as she got out; "he sneers at
+everything that isn't successful"
+
+Irene was in what was called the 'Ladies' drawing-room' of the
+Piedmont Hotel.
+
+Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her
+former friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a sofa
+never sat on since the hotel's foundation.  Jolyon could see that
+Irene was deeply affected by this simple forgiveness.
+
+"So Soames has been worrying you?" he said.
+
+"I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to him."
+
+"You're not going, of course?" cried June.
+
+Irene smiled faintly and shook her head.  "But his position is
+horrible," she murmured.
+
+"It's his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he could."
+
+Jolyon ,remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped
+that no divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover's name.
+
+"Let us hear what Irene is going to do," he said.
+
+Irene's lips quivered, but she spoke calmly.
+
+"I'd better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me."
+
+"How horrible!"   cried June.
+
+"What else can I do?"
+
+"Out of the question," said Jolyon very quietly, "sans amour."
+
+He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she half
+turned her back on them, and stood regaining control of herself.
+
+June said suddenly:
+
+"Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone.
+What does he want at his age?"
+
+"A child.  It's not unnatural"
+
+"A child!" cried June scornfully.  "Of course!  To leave his money
+to.  If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have
+one; then you can divorce him, and he can marry her."
+
+Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring June-
+-her violent partizanship was fighting Soames' battle.
+
+"It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill,
+and see how things shape."
+
+"Of course," said June; "only...."
+
+Irene looked full at Jolyon--in all his many attempts afterwards to
+analyze that glance he never could succeed.
+
+"No!  I should only bring trouble on you all.  I will go abroad."
+
+He knew from her voice that this was final.  The irrelevant thought
+flashed through him: 'Well, I could see her there.'  But he said:
+
+"Don't you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he
+followed?"
+
+"I don't know.  I can but try."
+
+June sprang up and paced the room.  "It's all horrible," she said.
+"Why should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless year
+after year by this disgusting sanctimonious law?"  But someone had
+come into the room, and June came to a standstill.  Jolyon went up
+to Irene:
+
+"Do you want money?"  No.
+
+"And would you like me to let your fiat?"
+
+"Yes, Jolyon, please."
+
+"When shall you be going?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"You won't go back there in the meantime, will you?"  This he said
+with an anxiety strange to himself.
+
+"No; I've got all I want here."
+
+"You'll send me your address?"
+
+She put out her hand to him.  "I feel you're a rock."
+
+"Built on sand," answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; "but it's
+a pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that.  And if you
+change your mind....!  Come along, June; say good-bye."
+
+June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene.
+
+"Don't think of him," she said under her breath; "enjoy yourself,
+and bless you!"
+
+With a memory of tears in Irene's eyes, and of a smile on her lips,
+they went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had
+interrupted the interview and was turning over the papers on the
+table.
+
+Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed:
+
+"Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!"
+
+But Jolyon did not respond.  He had something of his father's
+balance, and could see things impartially even when his emotions
+were roused.  Irene was right; Soames' position was as bad or worse
+than her own.  As for the law--it catered for a human nature of
+which it took a naturally low view.  And, feeling that if he stayed
+in his daughter's company he would in one way or another commit an
+indiscretion, he told her he must catch his train back to Oxford;
+and hailing a cab, left her to Turner's water-colours, with the
+promise that he would think over that Gallery.
+
+But he thought over Irene instead.  Pity, they said, was akin to
+love!  If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he
+pitied her profoundly.  To think of her drifting about Europe so
+handicapped and lonely!  'I hope to goodness she'll keep her head!'
+he thought; 'she might easily grow desperate.'  In fact, now that
+she had cut loose from her poor threads of occupation, he couldn't
+imagine how she would go on--so beautiful a creature, hopeless, and
+fair game for anyone!  In his exasperation was more than a little
+fear and jealousy.  Women did strange things when they were driven
+into corners.  'I wonder what Soames will do now!'  he thought.  'A
+rotten, idiotic state of things!  And I suppose they would say it
+was her own fault.'  Very preoccupied and sore at heart, he got
+into his train, mislaid his ticket, and on the platform at Oxford
+took his hat off to a lady whose face he seemed to remember without
+being able to put a name to her, not even when he saw her having
+tea at the Rainbow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WHERE FORSYTES FEAR TO TREAD
+
+
+Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case
+still flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as
+death.  A spider's web!  Walking fast, and noting nothing in the
+moonlight, he brooded over the scene he had been through, over the
+memory of her figure rigid in his grasp.  And the more he brooded,
+the more certain he became that she had a lover--her words, 'I
+would sooner die!' were ridiculous if she had not.  Even if she had
+never loved him, she had made no fuss until Bosinney came on the
+scene.  No; she was in love again, or she would not have made that
+melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all the circumstances
+was reasonable!  Very well!  That simplified matters.
+
+'I'll take steps to know where I am,' he thought; 'I'll go to
+Polteed's the first thing tomorrow morning.'
+
+But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble
+with himself.  He had employed Polteed's agency several times in
+the routine of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie's
+case, but he had never thought it possible to employ them to watch
+his own wife.
+
+It was too insulting to himself!
+
+He slept over that project and his wounded pride--or rather, kept
+vigil.  Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she called
+herself by her maiden name of Heron.  Polteed would not know, at
+first at all events, whose wife she was, would not look at him
+obsequiously and leer behind his back.  She would just be the wife
+of one of his clients.  And that would be true--for was he not his
+own solicitor?
+
+He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at the
+first possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail himself.  And
+making Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee; he stole out of
+the house before the hour of breakfast.  He walked rapidly to one
+of those small West End streets where Polteed's and other firms
+ministered to the virtues of the wealthier classes.  Hitherto he
+had always had Polteed to see him in the Poultry; but he well knew
+their address, and reached it at the opening hour.  In the outer
+office, a room furnished so cosily that it might have been a
+money-lender's, he was attended by a lady who might have been a
+schoolmistress.
+
+"I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed.  He knows me--never mind my
+name."
+
+To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was reduced
+to having his wife spied on, was the overpowering consideration.
+
+Mr. Claud Polteed--so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed--was one of
+those men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown
+eyes, who might be taken for Jews but are really Phoenicians; he
+received Soames in a room hushed by thickness of carpet and
+curtains.  It was, in fact, confidentially furnished, without trace
+of document anywhere to be seen.
+
+Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door
+with a certain ostentation.
+
+"If a client sends for me," he was in the habit of saying, "he
+takes what precaution he likes.  If he comes here, we convince him
+that we have no leakages.  I may safely say we lead in security, if
+in nothing else...."  "Now, sir, what can I do for you?"
+
+Soames' gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak.  It was
+absolutely necessary to hide from this man that he had any but
+professional interest in the matter; and, mechanically, his face
+assumed its sideway smile.
+
+"I've come to you early like this because there's not an hour to
+lose"--if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet!  "Have you a
+really trustworthy woman free?"
+
+Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his eyes
+over it, and locked the drawer up again.
+
+"Yes," he said; "the very woman."
+
+Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs--nothing but a faint
+flush, which might have been his normal complexion, betrayed him.
+
+"Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat C,
+Truro Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Polteed; "divorce, I presume?" and he blew
+into a speaking-tube.  "Mrs. Blanch in?  I shall want to speak to
+her in ten minutes."
+
+"Deal with any reports yourself," resumed Soames, "and send them to
+me personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered.  My
+client exacts the utmost secrecy."
+
+Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, 'You are teaching your
+grandmother, my dear sir; and his eyes slid over Soames' face for
+one unprofessional instant.
+
+"Make his mind perfectly easy," he said.  "Do you smoke?"
+
+"No," said Soames.  "Understand me: Nothing may come of this.  If a
+name gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very
+serious consequences."
+
+Mr. Polteed nodded.  "I can put it into the cipher category.  Under
+that system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers."
+
+He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote
+on them, and handed one to Soames.
+
+"Keep that, sir; it's your key.  I retain this duplicate.  The case
+we'll call 7x.  The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the
+Mansions 25 ; yourself--I should say, your firm--31; my firm 32,
+myself 2.  In case you should have to mention your client in
+writing I have called him 43 ; any person we suspect will be 47;
+a second person 51.  Any special hint or instruction while we're
+about it?"
+
+"No," said Soames; "that is--every consideration compatible."
+
+Again Mr. Polteed nodded.  "Expense?"
+
+Soames shrugged.  "In reason," he answered curtly, and got up.
+"Keep it entirely in your own hands."
+
+"Entirely," said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and
+the door.  "I shall be seeing you in that other case before long.
+Good morning, sir."  His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames
+once more, and he unlocked the door.
+
+"Good morning," said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.
+
+Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself.  A spider's
+web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean
+method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life
+as his most sacred piece of property.  But the die was cast, he
+could not go back.  And he went on into the Poultry, and locked
+away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher destined to
+make crystal-clear his domestic bankruptcy.
+
+Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all
+the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of
+others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own;
+and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole
+unfeeling process of legal regulation.
+
+He worked hard all day.  Winifred was due at four o'clock; he was
+to take her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C.,
+and waiting for her he re-read the letter he  had caused her to
+write the day of Dartie's departure, requiring him to return.
+
+
+"DEAR MONTAGUE,
+
+"I have received your letter with the news that you have left me
+for ever and are on your way to Buenos Aires.  It has naturally
+been a great shock.  I am taking this earliest opportunity of
+writing to tell you that I am prepared to let bygones be bygones if
+you will return to me at once.  I beg you to do so.  I am very much
+upset, and will not say any more now.  I am sending this letter
+registered to the address you left at your Club.  Please cable to
+me.
+
+"Your still affectionate wife,
+
+"WINIFRED DARTIE."
+
+
+Ugh!  What bitter humbug!  He remembered leaning over Winifred
+while she copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said,
+laying down her pen, "Suppose he comes, Soames!"  in such a strange
+tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind.  "He won't
+come," he had answered, "till he's spent his money.  That's why we
+must act at once."  Annexed to the copy of that letter was the
+original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club.  Soames
+could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor.
+Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on.  He seemed to hear
+the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously!  Seriously enough
+to write him as you did?  Do you think he meant it?"  Never mind!
+The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not returned.
+Annexed also was his cabled answer: "Impossible return.  Dartie."
+Soames shook his head.  If the whole thing were not disposed of
+within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a
+bad penny.  It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him,
+besides all the worry to Winifred and his father.  'I must stiffen
+Dreamer's back,' he thought; 'we must push it on.'
+
+Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her
+fair hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James' barouche
+drawn by James' pair.  Soames had not seen it in the City since his
+father retired from business five years ago, and its incongruity
+gave him a shock.  'Times are changing,' he thought; 'one doesn't
+know what'll go next!'  Top hats even were scarcer.  He enquired
+after Val.  Val, said Winifred, wrote that he was going to play
+polo next term.  She thought he was in a very good set.  She added
+with fashionably disguised anxiety: "Will there be much publicity
+about my affair, Soames?  Must it be in the papers?  It's so bad
+for him, and the girls."
+
+With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:
+
+"The papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to keep things
+out.  They pretend to be guarding the public's morals, and they
+corrupt them with their beastly reports.  But we haven't got to
+that yet.  We're only seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution
+question.  Of course he understands that it's to lead to a divorce;
+but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie back--you might
+practice that attitude to-day."
+
+Winifred sighed.
+
+"Oh!  What a clown Monty's been!"   she said.
+
+Soames gave her a sharp look.  It was clear to him that she could
+not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing
+if given half a chance.  His own instinct had been firm in this
+matter from the first.  To save a little scandal now would only
+bring on his sister and her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin
+later on if Dartie were allowed to hang on to them, going down-hill
+and spending the money James would leave his daughter.  Though it
+was all tied up, that fellow would milk the settlements somehow,
+and make his family pay through the nose to keep him out of
+bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol!  They left the shining carriage,
+with the shining horses and the shining-hatted servants on the
+Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.'s Chambers in Crown
+Office Row.
+
+"Mr. Bellby is here, sir," said the clerk; "Mr. Dreamer will be ten
+minutes."
+
+Mr. Bellby, the junior--not as junior as he might have been, for
+Soames only employed barristers of established reputation; it was,
+indeed, something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed
+to establish that which made him employ them--Mr. Bellby was
+seated, taking a final glance through his papers.  He had come from
+Court, and was in wig and gown, which suited a nose jutting out
+like the handle of a tiny pump, his small shrewd blue eyes, and
+rather protruding lower lip--no better man to supplement and
+stiffen Dreamer.
+
+The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the weather
+and spoke of the war.  Soames interrupted suddenly:
+
+"If he doesn't comply we can't bring proceedings for six months.  I
+want to get on with the matter, Bellby."
+
+Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at
+Winifred and murmured: "The Law's delays, Mrs. Dartie."
+
+"Six months!" repeated Soames; "it'll drive it up to June!  We
+shan't get the suit on till after the long vacation.  We must put
+the screw on, Bellby"--he would have all his work cut out to keep
+Winifred up to the scratch.
+
+"Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir."
+
+They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting
+Winifred after an interval of one minute by his watch.
+
+Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before
+the fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he
+had the leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great
+learning, a considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and
+little greyish whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking of
+one eye, and the concealment of his lower with his upper lip, which
+gave a smothered turn to his speech.  He had a way, too, of coming
+suddenly round the corner on the person he was talking to; this,
+with a disconcerting tone of voice, and a habit of growling before
+he began to speak--had secured a reputation second in Probate and
+Divorce to very few.  Having listened, eye cocked, to Mr. Bellby's
+breezy recapitulation of the facts, he growled, and said:
+
+"I know all that;" and coming round the corner at Winifred,
+smothered the words:
+
+"We want to get him back, don't we, Mrs. Dartie?"
+
+Soames interposed sharply:
+
+"My sister's position, of course, is intolerable."
+
+Dreamer growled.  "Exactly.  Now, can we rely on the cabled
+refusal, or must we wait till after Christmas to give him a chance
+to have written--that's the point, isn't it?"
+
+"The sooner...."  Soames began.
+
+"What do you say, Bellby?" said Dreamer, coming round his corner.
+
+Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.
+
+"We won't be on till the middle of December.  We've no need to give
+um more rope than that."
+
+"No," said Soames, "why should my sister be incommoded by his
+choosing to go"
+
+"To Jericho!" said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; "quite
+so.  People oughtn't to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?"
+And he raised his gown into a sort of fantail.  "I agree.  We can
+go forward.  Is there anything more?"
+
+"Nothing at present," said Soames meaningly; "I wanted you to see
+my sister."
+
+Dreamer growled softly: "Delighted.  Good evening!"  And let fall
+the protection of his gown.
+
+They filed out.  Winifred went down the stairs.  Soames lingered.
+In spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.
+
+"The evidence is all right, I think," he said to Bellby.  "Between
+ourselves, if we don't get the thing through quick, we never may.
+D'you think be understands that?"
+
+"I'll make um," said Bellby.  "Good man though--good man."
+
+Soames nodded and hastened after his sister.  He found her in a
+draught, biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:
+
+"The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete."
+
+Winifred's face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to
+the carriage.  And, all through that silent drive back to Green
+Street, the souls of both of them revolved a single thought: 'Why,
+oh! why should I have to expose my misfortune to the public like
+this?  Why have to employ spies to peer into my private troubles?
+They were not of my making.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT
+
+
+The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was
+animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of
+what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the
+British body politic.  Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning
+a war which must affect property, had been heard to say that these
+Boers were a pig-headed lot; they were causing a lot of expense,
+and the sooner they had their lesson the better.  He would send out
+Wolseley!  Seeing always a little further than other people--whence
+the most considerable fortune of all the Forsytes--he had perceived
+already that Buller was not the man--'a bull of a chap, who just
+went butting, and if they didn't look out Ladysmith would fall.'
+This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he was
+enabled to say to everybody: 'I told you so.'  During that week of
+gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas
+attended so many drills in his corps, 'The Devil's Own,' that young
+Nicholas consulted the family physician about his son's health and
+was alarmed to find that he was perfectly sound.  The boy had only
+just eaten his dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense,
+and it was in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he
+should be playing with military efficiency at a time when military
+efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be wanted.
+His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly
+educated in the feeling that no British war could be other than
+little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of Imperial
+commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for he owned De
+Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient sacrifice on the
+part of his grandson.
+
+At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed.  The
+inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two
+months of the term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising
+out into vivid oppositions.  Normal adolescence, ever in England of
+a conservative tendency though not taking things too seriously, was
+vehement for a fight to a finish and a good licking for the Boers.
+Of this larger faction Val Dartie was naturally a member.  Radical
+youth, on the other hand, a small but perhaps more vocal body, was
+for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy.  Until Black
+Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and
+argument remained but academic.  Jolly was one of those who knew
+not where he stood.  A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon's love
+of justice prevented, him from seeing one side only.  Moreover, in
+his set of 'the best' there was a 'jumping-Jesus' of extremely
+advanced opinions and some personal magnetism.  Jolly wavered.  His
+father, too, seemed doubtful in his views.  And though, as was
+proper at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father,
+watchful for defects which might still be remedied, still that
+father had an 'air' which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of
+ironic tolerance.  Artists of course; were notoriously Hamlet-like,
+and to this extent one must discount for one's father, even if one
+loved him.  But Jolyon's original view, that to 'put your nose in
+where you aren't wanted' (as the Uitlanders had done) 'and then
+work the oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean
+potato,' had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction
+for his son, who thought a deal about gentility.  On the other hand
+Jolly could not abide such as his set called 'cranks,' and Val's
+set called 'smugs,' so that he was still balancing when the clock
+of Black Week struck.  One--two--three, came those ominous repulses
+at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso.  The sturdy English soul
+reacting after the first cried, 'Ah! but Methuen!' after the
+second: 'Ah! but Buller!' then, in inspissated gloom, hardened.
+And Jolly said to himself: 'No, damn it!  We've got to lick the
+beggars now; I don't care whether we're right or wrong.'  And, if
+he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought.
+
+That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with
+'one of the best.'  After the second toast, 'Buller and damnation
+to the Boers,' drunk--no heel taps--in the college Burgundy, he
+noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a
+grin and saying something to his neighbour.  He was sure it was
+disparaging.  The last boy in the world to make himself conspicuous
+or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red and shut his
+lips.  The queer hostility he had always felt towards his second-
+cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced.  'All right!'  he
+thought, 'you wait, my friend!'  More wine than was good for him,
+as the custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped
+forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.
+
+"What did you say about me in there?"
+
+"Mayn't I say what I like?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I said you were a pro-Boer--and so you are!"
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+"D'you want a row?"
+
+"Of course, but not here; in the garden."
+
+"All right.  Come on."
+
+They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching;
+they climbed the garden railings.  The spikes on the top slightly
+ripped Val's sleeve, and occupied his mind.  Jolly's mind was
+occupied by the thought that they were going to fight in the
+precincts of a college foreign to them both.  It was not the thing,
+but never mind--the young beast!
+
+They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took off
+their coats.
+
+"You're not screwed, are you?" said Jolly suddenly.  "I can't fight
+you if you're screwed."
+
+"No more than you."
+
+"All right then."
+
+Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of
+defence.  They had drunk too much for science, and so were
+especially careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote
+Val almost accidentally on the nose.  After that it was all a dark
+and ugly scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one
+to call 'time,' till, battered and blown, they unclinched and
+staggered back from each other, as a voice said:
+
+"Your names, young gentlemen?"
+
+At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate,
+like some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up
+their coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made
+for the secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight.  Here,
+in dim light, they mopped their faces, and without a word walked,
+ten paces apart, to the college gate.  They went out silently, Val
+going towards the Broad along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane
+towards the High.  His head, still fumed, was busy with regret that
+he had not displayed more science, passing in review the counters
+and knockout blows which he had not delivered.  His mind strayed on
+to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike that which he had just
+been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and sword, with thrust
+and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved Dumas.  He
+fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and D'Artagnan
+rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as Coconnas,
+Brissac, or Rochefort.  The fellow was just a confounded cousin who
+didn't come up to Cocker.  Never mind!  He had given him one or
+two.  'Pro-Boer!'  The word still rankled, and thoughts of en-
+listing jostled his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing
+gallantly, while the Boers rolled over like rabbits.  And, turning
+up his smarting eyes, he saw the stars shining between the house-
+tops of the High, and himself lying out on the Karoo (whatever that
+was) rolled in a blanket, with his rifle ready and his gaze fixed
+on a glittering heaven.
+
+He had a fearful 'head' next morning, which he doctored, as became
+one of 'the best,' by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong
+coffee which he could not drink, and only sipping a little Hock at
+lunch.  The legend that 'some fool' had run into him round a corner
+accounted for a bruise on his cheek.  He would on no account have
+mentioned the fight, for; on second thoughts, it fell far short of
+his standards.
+
+The next day he went 'down,' and travelled through to Robin Hill.
+Nobody was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to
+Paris.  He spent a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of
+touch with either of his sisters.  June, indeed, was occupied with
+lame ducks, whom, as a rule, Jolly could not stand, especially that
+Eric Cobbley and his family, 'hopeless outsiders,' who were always
+littering up the house in the Vacation.  And between Holly and
+himself there was a strange division, as if she were beginning to
+have opinions of her own, which was so--unnecessary.  He punched
+viciously at a ball, rode furiously but alone in Richmond Park,
+making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles put up to close
+certain worn avenues of grass--keeping his nerve in, he called it.
+Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are.  He
+bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting
+across the pond into the kitchen--garden wall, to the peril of
+gardeners, with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist
+and save South Africa for his country.  In fact, now that they were
+appealing for Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset.
+Ought he to go?  None of 'the best,' so far as he knew--and he was
+in correspondence with several--were thinking of joining.  If they
+had been making a move he would have gone at once--very compet-
+itive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be
+left behind in anything--but to do it off his own bat might look
+like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary.
+Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young
+Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked.  It was altogether
+mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became
+quite unlike his serene and rather lordly self.
+
+And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath--two
+riders, in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she
+on the left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and
+he on the right-hand as assuredly that 'squirt' Val Dartie.  His
+first impulse was to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning
+of this portent, tell the fellow to 'bunk,' and take Holly home.
+His second-to feel that he would look a fool if they refused.  He
+reined his horse in behind a tree, then perceived that it was
+equally impossible to spy on them.  Nothing for it but to go home
+and await her coming!  Sneaking out with that young bounder!  He
+could not consult with June, because she had gone up that morning
+in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot.  And his father was still
+in 'that rotten Paris.'  He felt that this was emphatically one of
+those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at
+school, where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to
+newspapers and placed them in the centre of their studies to
+accustom them to coolness in moments of danger.  He did not feel at
+all cool waiting in the stable-yard, idly stroking the dog
+Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat monk, and sad in the absence of
+his master, turned up his face, panting with gratitude for this
+attention.  It was half an hour before Holly came, flushed and ever
+so much prettier than she had any right to look.  He saw her look
+at him quickly--guiltily of course--then followed her in, and,
+taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their grand-
+father's study.  The room, not much used now, was still vaguely
+haunted for them both by a presence with which they associated
+tenderness, large drooping white moustaches, the scent of cigar
+smoke, and laughter.  Here Jolly, in the prime of his youth, before
+he went to school at all, had been wont to wrestle with his grand-
+father, who even at eighty had an irresistible habit of crooking
+his leg.  Here Holly, perched on the arm of the great leather
+chair, had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which she
+would whisper secrets.  Through that window they had all three
+sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn, and a
+mysterious game called 'Wopsy-doozle,' not to be understood by
+outsiders, which made old Jolyon very hot.  Here once on a warm
+night Holly had appeared in her 'nighty,' having had a bad dream,
+to have the clutch of it released.  And here Jolly, having begun
+the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle
+Beauce's new-laid egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent down (in
+the absence of his father) to the ensuing dialogue:
+
+"Now, my boy, you mustn't go on like this."
+
+"Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she
+boxed mine again."
+
+"Strike a lady?  That'll never do!  Have you begged her pardon?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Then you must go and do it at once.  Come along."
+
+"But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one."
+
+"My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do."
+
+"Well, she lost her temper; and I didn't lose mine."
+
+"Come along."
+
+"You come too, then, Gran."
+
+"Well--this time only."
+
+And they had gone hand in hand.
+
+Here--where the Waverley novels and Byron's works and Gibbon's
+Roman Empire and Humboldt's Cosmos, and the bronzes on the
+mantelpiece, and that masterpiece of the oily school, 'Dutch
+Fishing-Boats at Sunset,' were fixed as fate, and for all sign of
+change old Jolyon might have been sitting there still, with legs
+crossed, in the arm chair, and domed forehead and deep eyes grave
+above The Times--here they came, those two grandchildren.  And
+Jolly said:
+
+"I saw you and that fellow in the Park."
+
+The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some
+satisfaction; she ought to be ashamed!
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.
+
+"Do you know," he said weightily, "that he called me a pro-Boer
+last term?  And I had to fight him."
+
+"Who won?"
+
+Jolly wished to answer: 'I should have,' but it seemed beneath him.
+
+"Look here!" he said, "what's the meaning of it?  Without telling
+anybody!"
+
+"Why should I?  Dad isn't here; why shouldn't I ride with him?"
+
+"You've got me to ride with.  I think he's an awful young rotter."
+
+Holly went pale with anger.
+
+"He isn't.  It's your own fault for not liking him."
+
+And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at
+the bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded
+from him so far by his sister's dark head under her soft felt
+riding hat.  He felt queerly disturbed, shaken to his young
+foundations.  A lifelong domination lay shattered round his feet.
+He went up to the Venus and mechanically inspected the tortoise.
+
+Why didn't he like Val Dartie?  He could not tell.  Ignorant of
+family history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started
+thirteen years before with Bosinney's defection from June in favour
+of Soames' wife, knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at
+sea.  He just did dislike him.  The question, however, was: What
+should he do?  Val Dartie, it was true, was a second-cousin, but it
+was not the thing for Holly to go about with him.  And yet to
+'tell' of what he had chanced on was against his creed.  In this
+dilemma he went and sat in the old leather chair and crossed his
+legs.  It grew dark while he sat there staring out through the long
+window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves, becoming
+slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.
+
+'Grandfather!' he thought without sequence, and took out his watch.
+He could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going.  'Five
+o'clock!'  His grandfather's first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth
+with age--all the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of
+many a fall.  The chime was like a little voice from out of that
+golden age, when they first came from St.  John's Wood, London, to
+this house--came driving with grandfather in his carriage, and
+almost instantly took to the trees.  Trees to climb, and grand-
+father watering the geranium-beds below!  What was to be done?
+Tell Dad he must come home?  Confide in June?--only she was so--so
+sudden!  Do nothing and trust to luck?  After all, the Vac.  would
+soon be over.  Go up and see Val and warn him off?  But how get his
+address?  Holly wouldn't give it him!  A maze of paths, a cloud of
+possibilities!  He lit a cigarette.  When he had smoked it halfway
+through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been
+passed gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper:
+'Do nothing; be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!'  And Jolly
+heaved a sigh of contentment, blowing smoke through his,
+nostrils....
+
+But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still
+frowning.  'He is not--he is not!'  were the words which kept
+forming on her lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JOLYON IN TWO MINDS
+
+
+A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare
+St. Lazare was Jolyon's haunt in Paris.  He hated his fellow
+Forsytes abroad--vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden
+runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge.  Their air of
+having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as
+possible annoyed him.  But no other Forsyte came near this haunt,
+where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was excel-
+lent.  Paris was always to him more attractive in winter.  The
+acrid savour from woodsmoke and chestnut-roasting braziers, the
+sharpness of the wintry sunshine on bright rays, the open cafes
+defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained brisk boulevard
+crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a soul
+which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.
+
+He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where
+pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed.  He felt
+philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a
+subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a
+darkness shot with shifting gleams of light.
+
+When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he
+was far from admitting that Irene's presence was influencing him.
+He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to see
+her had been more than half the reason.  In England one did not
+admit what was natural.  He had thought it might be well to speak
+to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but in
+Paris he at once knew better.  There was a glamour over the city.
+On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer which
+procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:
+
+
+"MY DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"It will be a happiness for me to see you.
+
+" IRENE."
+
+
+He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as
+he had often had going to visit an adored picture.  No woman, so
+far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sen-
+suous and yet impersonal sensation.  He was going to sit and feast
+his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to go and
+feast his eyes again to-morrow.  Such was his feeling, when in the
+tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near the river
+she came to him preceded by a small page-boy who uttered the word,
+"Madame," and vanished.  Her face, her smile, the poise of her
+figure, were just as he had pictured, and the expression of her
+face said plainly: 'A friend!'
+
+"Well," he said, "what news, poor exile?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Nothing from Soames?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you
+some money.  How do you like Paris?"
+
+While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he
+had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving
+just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least
+conceivable dimple.  It was like discovering a woman in what had
+hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost
+impersonally admired.  She owned that to be alone in Paris was a
+little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that
+it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert.  Besides,
+the English were not liked just now!
+
+"That will hardly be your case," said Jolyon; "you should appeal to
+the French."
+
+"It has its disadvantages."
+
+Jolyon nodded.
+
+"Well, you must let me take you about while I'm here.  We'll start
+to-morrow.  Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we'll go to the
+Opera-Comique."
+
+It was the beginning of daily meetings.
+
+Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of
+the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which
+to be friendly with a pretty woman.  Revelation was alighting like
+a bird in his heart, singing: 'Elle est ton reve!  Elle est ton
+reve!  Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous--a bad
+case of elderly rapture.  Having once been ostracised by Society,
+he had never since had any real regard for conventional morality;
+but the idea of a love which she could never return--and how could
+she at his age?--hardly mounted beyond his subconscious mind.  He
+was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and loneliness of her
+life.  Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the pleasure she
+clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably desirous
+of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure.  It was like
+watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink--in his
+companionship.  So far as they could tell, no one knew her address
+except himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known,
+so that discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits
+to concerts, picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners,
+expeditions to Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau.  And time
+fled--one of those full months without past to it or future.  What
+in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now
+perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective
+companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry-
+-arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there, smiling
+and happy in their friendship, and always to him more beautiful and
+spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life seemed to march
+in admirable step with his own, conditioned by emotion more than by
+reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to beauty, almost
+passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to instinctive
+rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable.  And during
+all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with
+which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work
+of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire.  The future--inexorable
+pendant to the present he took care not to face, for fear of
+breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this
+time in places still more delightful, where the sun was hot and
+there were strange things to see and paint.  The end came swiftly
+on the 20th of January with a telegram:
+
+
+"Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry.
+JOLLY."
+
+
+Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the
+Louvre.  It brought him up with a round turn.  While he was lotus-
+eating here, his boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought to be,
+had taken this great step towards danger, hardship, perhaps even
+death.  He felt disturbed to the soul, realising suddenly how Irene
+had twined herself round the roots of his being.  Thus threatened
+with severance, the tie between them--for it had become a kind of
+tie--no longer had impersonal quality.  The tranquil enjoyment of
+things in common, Jolyon perceived, was gone for ever.  He saw his
+feeling as it was, in the nature of an infatuation.  Ridiculous,
+perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose itself.
+And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any such
+disclosure.  The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way.  He was
+proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight
+for the country; for on Jolyon's pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had
+left its mark.  And so the end was reached before the beginning!
+Well, luckily he had never made a sign!
+
+When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the 'Virgin
+of the Rocks,' graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious.  'Have
+I to give up seeing that?' he thought.  'It's unnatural, so long as
+she's willing that I should see her.'  He stood, unnoticed,
+watching her, storing up the image of her figure, envying the
+picture on which she was bending that long scrutiny.  Twice she
+turned her head towards the entrance, and he thought: 'That's for
+me!'  At last he went forward.
+
+"Look!" he said.
+
+She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.
+
+That sigh, too, was for him!  His position was really cruel!  To be
+loyal to his son he must just shake her hand and go.  To be loyal
+to the feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that
+feeling was.  Could she, would she understand the silence in which
+he was gazing at that picture?
+
+"I'm afraid I must go home at once," he said at last.  "I shall
+miss all this awfully."
+
+"So shall I; but, of course, you must go."
+
+"Well!" said Jolyon holding out his hand.
+
+Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.
+
+"Such is life!" he said.  "Take care of yourself, my dear!"
+
+He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his brain
+refused to steer him away from her.  From the doorway, he saw her
+lift her hand and touch its fingers with her lips.  He raised his
+hat solemnly, and did not look back again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+DARTIE VERSUS DARTIE
+
+
+The suit--Dartie versus Dartie--for restitution of those conjugal
+rights concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided,
+followed the laws of subtraction towards day of judgment.  This was
+not reached before the Courts rose for Christmas, but the case was
+third on the list when they sat again.  Winifred spent the
+Christmas holidays a thought more fashionably than usual, with the
+matter locked up in her low-cut bosom.  James was particularly
+liberal to her that Christmas, expressing thereby his sympathy, and
+relief, at the approaching dissolution of her marriage with that
+'precious rascal,' which his old heart felt but his old lips could
+not utter.
+
+The disappearance of Dartie made the fall in Consols a
+comparatively small matter; and as to the scandal--the real animus
+he felt against that fellow, and the increasing lead which property
+was attaining over reputation in a true Forsyte about to leave this
+world, served to drug a mind from which all allusions to the matter
+(except his own) were studiously kept.  What worried him as a
+lawyer and a parent was the fear that Dartie might suddenly turn up
+and obey the Order of the Court when made.  That would be a pretty
+how-de-do!  The fear preyed on him in fact so much that, in
+presenting Winifred with a large Christmas cheque, he said: "It's
+chiefly for that chap out there; to keep him from coming back."  It
+was, of course, to pitch away good money, but all in the nature of
+insurance against that bankruptcy which would no longer hang over
+him if only the divorce went through; and he questioned Winifred
+rigorously until she could assure him that the money had been sent.
+Poor woman!--it cost her many a pang to send what must find its way
+into the vanity-bag of 'that creature!'  Soames, hearing of it,
+shook his head.  They were not dealing with a Forsyte, reasonably
+tenacious of his purpose.  It was very risky without knowing how
+the land lay out there.  Still, it would look well with the Court;
+and he would see that Dreamer brought it out.  "I wonder," he said
+suddenly, "where that ballet goes after the Argentine"; never
+omitting a chance of reminder; for he knew that Winifred still had
+a weakness, if not for Dartie, at least for not laundering him in
+public.  Though not good at showing admiration, he admitted that
+she was behaving extremely well, with all her children at home
+gaping like young birds for news of their father--Imogen just on
+the point of coming out, and Val very restive about the whole
+thing.  He felt that Val was the real heart of the matter to
+Winifred, who certainly loved him beyond her other children.  The
+boy could spoke the wheel of this divorce yet if he set his mind to
+it.  And Soames was very careful to keep the proximity of the
+preliminary proceedings from his nephew's ears.  He did more.  He
+asked him to dine at the Remove, and over Val's cigar introduced
+the subject which he knew to be nearest to his heart.
+
+"I hear," he said, "that you want to play polo up at Oxford."
+
+Val became less recumbent in his chair.
+
+"Rather!" he said.
+
+"Well," continued Soames, "that's a very expensive business.  Your
+grandfather isn't likely to consent to it unless he can make sure
+that he's not got any other drain on him."  And he paused to see
+whether the boy understood his meaning.
+
+Val's thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace
+appeared on his wide mouth, and he muttered:
+
+"I suppose you mean my Dad!"
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "I'm afraid it depends on whether he continues
+to be a drag or not;" and said no more, letting the boy dream it
+over.
+
+But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey
+and a girl riding it.  Though Crum was in town and an introduction
+to Cynthia Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask; indeed,
+he shunned Crum and lived a life strange even to himself, except in
+so far as accounts with tailor and livery stable were concerned.
+To his mother, his sisters, his young brother, he seemed to spend
+this Vacation in 'seeing fellows,' and his evenings sleepily at
+home.  They could not propose anything in daylight that did not
+meet with the one response: "Sorry; I've got to see a fellow"; and
+he was put to extraordinary shifts to get in and out of the house
+unobserved in riding clothes; until, being made a member of the
+Goat's Club, he was able to transport them there, where he could
+change unregarded and slip off on his hack to Richmond Park.  He
+kept his growing sentiment religiously to himself.  Not for a world
+would he breathe to the 'fellows,' whom he was not 'seeing,'
+anything so ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and
+his.  But he could not help its destroying his other appetites.  It
+was coming between him and the legitimate pleasures of youth at
+last on its own in a way which must, he knew, make him a milksop in
+the eyes of Crum.  All he cared for was to dress in his last-
+created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin Hill Gate, where
+presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling with its slim
+and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves they would
+go off side by side, not talking very much, riding races sometimes,
+and sometimes holding hands.  More than once of an evening, in a
+moment of expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how
+this shy sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his
+'life.'  But bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five
+were spoil-sports, prevented him.  After all, he supposed he would
+have to go through with College, and she would have to 'come out,'
+before they could be married; so why complicate things, so long as
+he could see her?  Sisters were teasing and unsympathetic beings, a
+brother worse, so there was no one to, confide in.  Ah!  And this
+beastly divorce business!  What a misfortune to have a name which
+other people hadn't!  If only he had been called Gordon or Scott or
+Howard or something fairly common!  But Dartie--there wasn't
+another in the directory!  One might as well have been named Morkin
+for all the covert it afforded!  So matters went on, till one day
+in the middle of January the silver-roan palfrey and its rider were
+missing at the tryst.  Lingering in the cold, he debated whether he
+should ride on to the house: But Jolly might be there, and the
+memory of their dark encounter was still fresh within him.  One
+could not be always fighting with her brother!  So he returned
+dismally to town and spent an evening plunged in gloom.  At
+breakfast next day he noticed that his mother had on an unfamiliar
+dress and was wearing her hat.  The dress was black with a glimpse
+of peacock blue, the hat black and large--she looked exceptionally
+well.  But when after breakfast she said to him, "Come in here,
+Val," and led the way to the drawing-room, he was at once beset by
+qualms.  Winifred carefully shut the door and passed her
+handkerchief over her lips; inhaling the violette de Parme with
+which it had been soaked, Val thought: 'Has she found out about
+Holly?'
+
+Her voice interrupted
+
+"Are you going to be nice to me, dear boy?" Val grinned doubtfully.
+
+"Will you come with me this morning...."
+
+"I've got to see...."  began Val, but something in her face stopped
+him.  "I say," he said, "you don't mean ...."
+
+"Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning."  Already!--that
+d---d business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since
+nobody ever mentioned it.  In self-commiseration he stood picking
+little bits of skin off his fingers.  Then noticing that his
+mother's lips were all awry, he said impulsively: "All right,
+mother; I'll come.  The brutes!"   What brutes he did not know, but
+the expression exactly summed up their joint feeling, and restored
+a measure of equanimity.
+
+"I suppose I'd better change into a 'shooter,"' he muttered,
+escaping to his room.  He put on the 'shooter,' a higher collar, a
+pearl pin, and his neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous
+accompaniment.  Looking at himself in the glass, he said, "Well,
+I'm damned if I'm going to show anything!" and went down.  He found
+his grandfather's carriage at the door, and his mother in furs,
+with the appearance of one going to a Mansion House Assembly.  They
+seated themselves side by side in the closed barouche, and all the
+way to the Courts of Justice Val made but one allusion to the
+business in hand.  "There'll be nothing about those pearls, will
+there?"
+
+The little tufted white tails of Winifred's muff began to shiver.
+
+"Oh, no," she said, "it'll be quite harmless to-day.  Your
+grandmother wanted to come too, but I wouldn't let her.  I thought
+you could take care of me.  You look so nice, Val.  Just pull your
+coat collar up a little more at the back--that's right."
+
+"If they bully you...."  began Val.
+
+"Oh! they won't.  I shall be very cool.  It's the only way."
+
+"They won't want me to give evidence or anything?"
+
+"No, dear; it's all arranged."  And she patted his hand.  The
+determined front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in Val's
+chest, and he busied himself in drawing his gloves off and on.  He
+had taken what he now saw was the wrong pair to go with his spats;
+they should have been grey, but were deerskin of a dark tan;
+whether to keep them on or not he could not decide.  They arrived
+soon after ten.  It was his first visit to the Law Courts, and the
+building struck him at once.
+
+"By Jove!" he said as they passed into the hall, "this'd make four
+or five jolly good racket courts."
+
+Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs.
+
+"Here you are!" he said, without shaking hands, as if the event had
+made them too familiar for such formalities.  "It's Happerly
+Browne, Court I.  We shall be on first."
+
+A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing
+now in the top of Val's chest, but he followed his mother and uncle
+doggedly, looking at no more than he could help, and thinking that
+the place smelled 'fuggy.'  People seemed to be lurking everywhere,
+and he plucked Soames by the sleeve.
+
+"I say, Uncle, you're not going to let those beastly papers in, are
+you?"
+
+Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to silence
+in its time.
+
+"In here," he said.  "You needn't take off your furs, Winifred."
+
+Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up.  In this
+confounded hole everybody and there were a good many of them--
+seemed sitting on everybody else's knee, though really divided from
+each other by pews; and Val had a feeling that they might all slip
+down together into the well.  This, however, was but a momentary
+vision--of mahogany, and black gowns, and white blobs of wigs and
+faces and papers, all rather secret and whispery--before he was
+sitting next his mother in the front row, with his back to it all,
+glad of her violette de Parme, and taking off his gloves for the
+last time.  His mother was looking at him; he was suddenly
+conscious that she had really wanted him there next to her, and
+that he counted for something in this business.
+
+All right!  He would show them!  Squaring his shoulders, he crossed
+his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats.  But just then an 'old
+Johnny' in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny
+raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite, and
+he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand up with everybody
+else.
+
+'Dartie versus Dartie!'
+
+It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one's name called
+out like this in public!  And, suddenly conscious that someone
+nearly behind him had begun talking about his family, he screwed
+his face round to see an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he
+were eating his own words--queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man
+he had seen once or twice dining at Park Lane and punishing the
+port; he knew now where they 'dug them up.'  All the same he found
+the old buffer quite fascinating, and would have continued to stare
+if his mother had not touched his arm.  Reduced to gazing before
+him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge's face instead.  Why should
+that old 'sportsman' with his sarcastic mouth and his quick-moving
+eyes have the power to meddle with their private affairs--hadn't he
+affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as nasty?  And
+there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated
+individualism of his breed.  The voice behind him droned along:
+"Differences about money matters--extravagance of the respondent"
+(What a word!  Was that his father?)"strained situation--frequent
+absences on the part of Mr. Dartie.  My client, very rightly, your
+Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course--but lead to
+ruin--remonstrated--gambling at cards and on the racecourse--"
+('That's right!' thought Val, 'pile it on!') "Crisis early in
+October, when the respondent wrote her this letter from his Club."
+Val sat up and his ears burned.  "I propose to read it with the
+emendations necessary to the epistle of a gentleman who has been--
+shall we say dining, me Lud?"
+
+'Old brute!' thought Val, flushing deeper; 'you're not paid to make
+jokes!'
+
+"'You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house.
+I am leaving the country to-morrow.  It's played out'--an
+expression, your Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who
+have not met with conspicuous success."
+
+'Sniggering owls!' thought Val, and his flush deepened.
+
+"'I am tired of being insulted by you.'  My client will tell your
+Ludship that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him
+'the limit' a very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all
+the circumstances."
+
+Val glanced sideways at his mother's impassive face, it had a
+hunted look in the eyes.  'Poor mother,' he thought, and touched
+her arm with his own.  The voice behind droned on.
+
+"'I am going to live a new life.  M.  D.'"
+
+"And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship
+Tuscarora for Buenos Aires.  Since then we have nothing from him
+but a cabled refusal in answer to the letter which my client wrote
+the following day in great distress, begging him to return to her.
+With your Ludship's permission.  I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the
+box."
+
+When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and
+say: 'Look here!  I'm going to see you jolly well treat her
+decently.'  He subdued it, however; heard her saying, 'the truth,
+the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' and looked up.  She
+made a rich figure of it, in her furs and large hat, with a slight
+flush on her cheek-bones, calm, matter-of-fact; and he felt proud
+of her thus confronting all these 'confounded lawyers.'  The
+examination began.  Knowing that this was only the preliminary to
+divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the questions framed so
+as to give the impression that she really wanted his father back.
+It seemed to him that they were 'foxing Old Bagwigs finely.'
+
+And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly:
+
+"Now, why did your husband leave you--not because you called him
+'the limit,' you know?"
+
+Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving
+his face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told
+him that the issue was in peril.  Had Uncle Soames and the old
+buffer behind made a mess of it?  His mother was speaking with a
+slight drawl.
+
+"No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time."
+
+"What had gone on?"
+
+"Our differences about money."
+
+"But you supplied the money.  Do you suggest that he left you to
+better his position?"
+
+'The brute!  The old brute, and nothing but the brute!'  thought
+Val suddenly.  'He smells a rat he's trying to get at the pastry!'
+And his heart stood still.  If--if he did, then, of course, he
+would know that his mother didn't really want his father back.  His
+mother spoke again, a thought more fashionably.
+
+"No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money.
+It took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last--and
+when he did...."
+
+"I see, you had refused.  But you've sent him some since."
+
+"My Lord, I wanted him back."
+
+"And you thought that would bring him?"
+
+"I don't know, my Lord, I acted on my father's advice."
+
+Something in the Judge's face, in the sound of the papers behind
+him, in the sudden crossing of his uncle's legs, told Val that she
+had made just the right answer.  'Crafty!'  he thought; 'by Jove,
+what humbug it all is!'
+
+The Judge was speaking:
+
+"Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie.  Are you still fond of your
+husband?"
+
+Val's hands, slack behind him, became fists.  What business had
+that Judge to make things human suddenly?  To make his mother speak
+out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn't know herself,
+before all these people!  It wasn't decent.  His mother answered,
+rather low: "Yes, my Lord."  Val saw the Judge nod.  'Wish I could
+take a cock-shy at your head!' he thought irreverently, as his
+mother came back to her seat beside him.  Witnesses to his father's
+departure and continued absence followed--one of their own maids
+even, which struck Val as particularly beastly; there was more
+talking, all humbug; and then the Judge pronounced the decree for
+restitution, and they got up to go.  Val walked out behind his
+mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level best to
+despise everybody.  His mother's voice in the corridor roused him
+from an angry trance.
+
+"You behaved beautifully, dear.  It was such a comfort to have you.
+Your uncle and I are going to lunch."
+
+"All right," said Val; "I shall have time to go and see that
+fellow."  And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs
+and out into the air.  He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the
+Goat's Club.  His thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before
+her brother showed her this thing in to-morrow's paper.
+
+When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the
+Cheshire Cheese.  He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr.
+Bellby.  At that early hour of noon they would have it to
+themselves, and Winifred had thought it would be 'amusing' to see
+this far-famed hostelry.  Having ordered a light repast, to the
+consternation of the waiter, they awaited its arrival together with
+that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after the hour and a half's
+suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity.  Mr. Bellby entered
+presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were glum.
+Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was the
+matter with that!
+
+"Quite," said Soames in a suitably low voice, "but we shall have to
+begin again to get evidence.  He'll probably try the divorce--it
+will look fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from the
+start.  His questions showed well enough that he doesn't like this
+restitution dodge."
+
+"Pho!" said Mr. Bellby cheerily, "he'll forget!  Why, man, he'll
+have tried a hundred cases between now and then.  Besides, he's
+bound by precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is
+satisfactory.  We won't let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge
+of the facts.  Dreamer did it very nicely--he's got a fatherly
+touch about um!"
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie," went on Mr. Bellby; "ye've a
+natural gift for giving evidence.  Steady as a rock."
+
+Here the, waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and
+the remark: "I 'urried up the pudden, sir.  You'll find plenty o'
+lark in it to-day."
+
+Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose.  But
+Soames and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of
+graviffred brown masses, touching them gingerly with their forks in
+the hope of distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little song-
+givers.  Having begun, however, they found they were hungrier than
+they thought, and finished the lot, with a glass of port apiece.
+Conversation turned on the war.  Soames thought Ladysmith would
+fall, and it might last a year.  Bellby thought it would be over by
+the summer.  Both agreed that they wanted more men.  There was
+nothing for it but complete victory, since it was now a question of
+prestige.  Winifred brought things back to more solid ground by
+saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come on till after
+the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the boys would have
+forgotten about it before Val had to go up again; the London season
+too would be over.  The lawyers reassured her, an interval of six
+months was necessary--after that the earlier the better.  People
+were now beginning to come in, and they parted--Soames to the city,
+Bellby to his chambers, Winifred in a hansom to Park Lane to let
+her mother know how she had fared.  The issue had been so
+satisfactory on the whole that it was considered advisable to tell
+James, who never failed to say day after day that he didn't know
+about Winifred's affair, he couldn't tell.  As his sands ran out;
+the importance of mundane matters became increasingly grave to him,
+as if he were feeling: 'I must make the most of it, and worry well;
+I shall soon have nothing to worry about.'
+
+He received the report grudgingly.  It was a new-fangled way of
+going about things, and he didn't know!  But he gave Winifred a
+cheque, saying:
+
+"I expect you'll have a lot of expense.  That's a new hat you've
+got on.  Why doesn't Val come and see us?"
+
+Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon.  And, going home,
+she sought her bedroom where she could be alone.  Now that her
+husband had been ordered back into her custody with a view to
+putting him away from her for ever, she would try once more to find
+out from her sore and lonely heart what she really wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CHALLENGE
+
+
+The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out
+while Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would
+canter on to the usual tryst.  His spirits were rising rapidly.
+There had been nothing so very terrible in the morning's
+proceedings beyond the general disgrace of violated privacy.  'If
+we were engaged!'  he thought, 'what happens wouldn't matter.'  He
+felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and clamours at the
+results of matrimony, and hastens to get married.  And he galloped
+over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be late.
+But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second
+defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully.  He could not
+go back without seeing her to-day!  Emerging from the Park, he
+proceeded towards Robin Hill.  He could not make up his mind for
+whom to ask.  Suppose her father were back, or her sister or
+brother were in!  He decided to gamble, and ask for them all first,
+so that if he were in luck and they were not there, it would be
+quite natural in the end to ask for Holly; while if any of them
+were in--an 'excuse for a ride' must be his saving grace.
+
+"Only Miss Holly is in, sir."
+
+"Oh!  thanks.  Might I take my horse round to the stables?  And
+would you say--her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie."
+
+When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy.  She
+led him to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat.
+
+"I've been awfully anxious," said Val in a low voice.  "What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Jolly knows about our riding."
+
+"Is he in?"
+
+"No; but I expect he will be soon."
+
+"Then!" cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand.  She
+tried to withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at
+him wistfully.
+
+"First of all," he said, "I want to tell you something about my
+family.  My Dad, you know, isn't altogether--I mean, he's left my
+mother and they're trying to divorce him; so they've ordered him to
+come back, you see.  You'll see that in the paper to-morrow."
+
+Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand squeezed
+his.  But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he hurried on:
+
+'Of course there's nothing very much at present, but there will be,
+I expect, before it's over; divorce suits are beastly, you know.  I
+wanted to tell you, because--because--you ought to know--if--" and
+he began to stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, "if--if you're
+going to be a darling and love me, Holly.  I love you--ever so; and
+I want to be engaged."  He had done it in a manner so inadequate
+that he could have punched his own head; and dropping on his knees,
+he tried to get nearer to that soft, troubled face.  "You do love
+me--don't you?  If you don't I...." There was a moment of silence
+and suspense, so awful that he could hear the sound of a mowing-
+machine far out on the lawn pretending there was grass to cut.
+Then she swayed forward; her free hand touched his hair, and he
+gasped: "Oh, Holly!"
+
+Her answer was very soft: "Oh, Val!"
+
+He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood, as
+the masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched,
+trembly.  He was afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break
+the spell; lest, if he did, she should shrink and deny her own
+surrender--so tremulous was she in his grasp, with her eyelids
+closed and his lips nearing them.  Her eyes opened, seemed to swim
+a little; he pressed his lips to hers.  Suddenly he sprang up;
+there had been footsteps, a sort of startled grunt.  He looked
+round.  No one!  But the long curtains which barred off the outer
+hall were quivering.
+
+"My God!  Who was that?"
+
+Holly too was on her feet.
+
+"Jolly, I expect," she whispered.
+
+Val clenched fists and resolution.
+
+"All right!" he said, "I don't care a bit now we're engaged," and
+striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside.  There at the
+fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately
+turned.  Val went forward.  Jolly faced round on him.
+
+"I beg your pardon for hearing," he said.
+
+With the best intentions in the world, Val could not help admiring
+him at that moment; his face was clear, his voice quiet, he looked
+somehow distinguished, as if acting up to principle.
+
+"Well!" Val said abruptly, "it's nothing to you."
+
+"Oh!" said Jolly; "you come this way," and he crossed the hall.
+Val followed.  At the study door he felt a touch on his arm;
+Holly's voice said:
+
+"I'm coming too."
+
+"No," said Jolly.
+
+"Yes," said Holly.
+
+Jolly opened the door, and they all three went in.  Once in the
+little room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of
+the worn Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each
+other, quite incapable of seeing any humour in the situation.
+
+Val broke the silence.
+
+"Holly and I are engaged.",
+
+Jolly stepped back and leaned against the lintel of the window.
+
+"This is our house," he said; "I'm not going to insult you in it.
+But my father's away.  I'm in charge of my sister.  You've taken
+advantage of me.
+
+"I didn't mean to," said Val hotly.
+
+"I think you did," said Jolly.  "If you hadn't meant to, you'd have
+spoken to me, or waited for my father to come back."
+
+"There were reasons," said Val.
+
+"What reasons?"
+
+"About my family--I've just told her.  I wanted her to know before
+things happen."
+
+Jolly suddenly became less distinguished.
+
+"You're kids," he said, "and you know you are.
+
+"I am not a kid," said Val.
+
+"You are--you're not twenty."
+
+"Well, what are you?"
+
+"I am twenty," said Jolly.
+
+"Only just; anyway, I'm as good a man as you.
+
+Jolly's face crimsoned, then clouded.  Some struggle was evidently
+taking place in him; and Val and Holly stared at him, so clearly
+was that struggle marked; they could even hear him breathing.  Then
+his face cleared up and became oddly resolute.
+
+"We'll see that," he said.  "I dare you to do what I'm going to
+do."
+
+"Dare me?"
+
+Jolly smiled.  "Yes," he said, "dare you; and I know very well you
+won't."
+
+A stab of misgiving shot through Val; this was riding very blind.
+
+"I haven't forgotten that you're a fire-eater," said Jolly slowly,
+"and I think that's about all you are; or that you called me a
+pro-Boer."
+
+Val heard a gasp above the sound of his own hard breathing, and saw
+Holly's face poked a little forward, very pale, with big eyes.
+
+"Yes," went on Jolly with a sort of smile, "we shall soon see.  I'm
+going to join the Imperial Yeomanry, and I dare you to do the same,
+Mr. Val Dartie."
+
+Val's head jerked on its stem.  It was like a blow between the
+eyes, so utterly unthought of, so extreme and ugly in the midst of
+his dreaming; and he looked at Holly with eyes grown suddenly,
+touchingly haggard.
+
+"Sit down!" said Jolly.  "Take your time!  Think it over well."
+And he himself sat down on the arm of his grandfather's chair.
+
+Val did not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his
+breeches' pockets-hands clenched and quivering.  The full awfulness
+of this decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with
+double knocks as of an angry postman.  If he did not take that
+'dare' he was disgraced in Holly's eyes, and in the eyes of that
+young enemy, her brute of a brother.  Yet if he took it, ah! then
+all would vanish--her face, her eyes, her hair, her kisses just
+begun!
+
+"Take your time," said Jolly again; "I don't want to be unfair."
+
+And they both looked at Holly.  She had recoiled against the
+bookshelves reaching to the ceiling; her dark head leaned against
+Gibbon's Roman Empire, her eyes in a sort of soft grey agony were
+fixed on Val.  And he, who had not much gift of insight, had
+suddenly a gleam of vision.  She would be proud of her brother--
+that enemy!  She would be ashamed of him!  His hands came out of
+his pockets as if lifted by a spring.
+
+"All right!" he said.  "Done!"
+
+Holly's face-oh! it was queer!  He saw her flush, start forward.
+He had done the right thing--her face was shining with wistful
+admiration.  Jolly stood up and made a little bow as who should
+say: 'You've passed.'
+
+"To-morrow, then," he said, "we'll go together."
+
+Recovering from the impetus which had carried him to that decision,
+Val looked at him maliciously from under his lashes.  'All right,'
+he thought, 'one to you.  I shall have to join--but I'll get back
+on you somehow.'  And he said with dignity: "I shall be ready."
+
+"We'll meet at the main Recruiting Office, then," said Jolly, "at
+twelve o'clock."  And, opening the window, he went out on to the
+terrace, conforming to the creed which had made him retire when he
+surprised them in the hall.
+
+The confusion in the mind of Val thus left alone with her for whom
+he had paid this sudden price was extreme.  The mood of 'showing-
+off' was still, however, uppermost.  One must do the wretched thing
+with an air.
+
+"We shall get plenty of riding and shooting, anyway," he said;
+"that's one comfort."  And it gave him a sort of grim pleasure to
+hear the sigh which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart.
+
+"Oh! the war'll soon be over," he said; "perhaps we shan't even
+have to go out.  I don't care, except for you."  He would be out of
+the way of that beastly divorce.  It was an ill-wind!  He felt her
+warm hand slip into his.  Jolly thought he had stopped their loving
+each other, did he?  He held her tightly round the waist, looking
+at her softly through his lashes, smiling to cheer her up,
+promising to come down and see her soon, feeling somehow six inches
+taller and much more in command of her than he had ever dared feel
+before.  Many times he kissed her before he mounted and rode back
+to town.  So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does the
+possessive instinct flourish and grow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DINNER AT JAMES'
+
+
+Dinner parties were not now given at James' in Park Lane--to every
+house the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer 'up to
+it'; no more can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above
+twenty fine white expanses; nor does the household cat any longer
+wonder why she is suddenly shut up.
+
+So with something like excitement Emily--who at seventy would still
+have liked a little feast and fashion now and then--ordered dinner
+for six instead of two, herself wrote a number of foreign words on
+cards, and arranged the flowers--mimosa from the Riviera, and white
+Roman hyacinths not from Rome.  There would only be, of course,
+James and herself, Soames, Winifred, Val, and Imogen--but she liked
+to pretend a little and dally in imagination with the glory of the
+past.  She so dressed herself that James remarked:
+
+"What are you putting on that thing for?  You'll catch cold."
+
+But Emily knew that the necks of women are protected by love of
+shining, unto fourscore years, and she only answered:
+
+"Let me put you on one of those dickies I got you, James; then
+you'll only have to change your trousers, and put on your velvet
+coat, and there you'll be.  Val likes you to look nice."
+
+"Dicky!" said James.  "You're always wasting your money on
+something."
+
+But he suffered the change to be made till his neck also shone,
+murmuring vaguely:
+
+"He's an extravagant chap, I'm afraid."
+
+A little brighter in the eye, with rather more colour than usual in
+his cheeks, he took his seat in the drawing-room to wait for the
+sound of the front-door bell.
+
+"I've made it a proper dinner party," Emily said comfortably; "I
+thought it would be good practice for Imogen--she must get used to
+it now she's coming out."
+
+James uttered an indeterminate sound, thinking of Imogen as she
+used to climb about his knee or pull Christmas crackers with him.
+
+"She'll be pretty," he muttered, "I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"She is pretty," said Emily; "she ought to make a good match."
+
+"There you go," murmured James; "she'd much better stay at home and
+look after her mother."  A second Dartie carrying off his pretty
+granddaughter would finish him!  He had never quite forgiven Emily
+for having been as much taken in by Montague Dartie as he himself
+had been.
+
+"Where's Warmson?" he said suddenly.  "I should like a glass of
+Madeira to-night."
+
+"There's champagne, James."
+
+James shook his head.  "No body," he said; "I can't get any good
+out of it."
+
+Emily reached forward on her side of the fire and rang the bell.
+
+"Your master would like a bottle of Madeira opened, Warmson."
+
+"No, no!" said James, the tips of his ears quivering with
+vehemence, and his eyes fixed on an object seen by him alone.
+"Look here, Warmson, you go to the inner cellar, and on the middle
+shelf of the end bin on the left you'll see seven bottles; take the
+one in the centre, and don't shake it.  It's the last of the
+Madeira I had from Mr. Jolyon when we came in here--never been
+moved; it ought to be in prime condition still; but I don't know, I
+can't tell."
+
+"Very good, sir," responded the withdrawing Warmson.
+
+"I was keeping it for our golden wedding," said James suddenly,
+"but I shan't live three years at my age."
+
+"Nonsense, James," said Emily, "don't talk like that."
+
+"I ought to have got it up myself," murmured James, "he'll shake it
+as likely as not."  And he sank into silent recollection of long
+moments among the open gas-jets, the cobwebs and the good smell of
+wine-soaked corks, which had been appetiser to so many feasts.  In
+the wine from that cellar was written the history of the forty odd
+years since he had come to the Park Lane house with his young
+bride, and of the many generations of friends and acquaintances who
+had passed into the unknown; its depleted bins preserved the record
+of family festivity--all the marriages, births, deaths of his kith
+and kin.  And when he was gone there it would be, and he didn't
+know what would become of it.  It'd be drunk or spoiled, he
+shouldn't wonder!
+
+>From that deep reverie the entrance of his son dragged him,
+followed very soon by that of Winifred and her two eldest.
+
+They went down arm-in-arm--James with Imogen, the debutante,
+because his pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred;
+Emily with Val, whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened.
+This was to be a proper full 'blowout' with 'fizz' and port!  And
+he felt in need of it, after what he had done that day, as yet
+undivulged.  After the first glass or two it became pleasant to
+have this bombshell up his sleeve, this piece of sensational
+patriotism, or example, rather, of personal daring, to display--for
+his pleasure in what he had done for his Queen and Country was so
+far entirely personal.  He was now a 'blood,' indissolubly
+connected with guns and horses; he had a right to swagger--not, of
+course, that he was going to.  He should just announce it quietly,
+when there was a pause.  And, glancing down the menu, he determined
+on 'Bombe aux fraises' as the proper moment; there would be a
+certain solemnity while they were eating that.  Once or twice
+before they reached that rosy summit of the dinner he was attacked
+by remembrance that his grandfather was never told anything!
+Still, the old boy was drinking Madeira, and looking jolly fit!
+Besides, he ought to be pleased at this set-off to the disgrace of
+the divorce.  The sight of his uncle opposite, too, was a sharp
+incentive.  He was so far from being a sportsman that it would be
+worth a lot to see his face.  Besides, better to tell his mother in
+this way than privately, which might upset them both!  He was sorry
+for her, but after all one couldn't be expected to feel much for
+others when one had to part from Holly.
+
+His grandfather's voice travelled to him thinly.  "Val, try a
+little of the Madeira with your ice.  You won't get that up at
+college."
+
+Val watched the slow liquid filling his glass, the essential oil of
+the old wine glazing the surface; inhaled its aroma, and thought:
+'Now for it!'  It was a rich moment.  He sipped, and a gentle glow
+spread in his veins, already heated.  With a rapid look round, he
+said, "I joined the Imperial Yeomanry to-day, Granny," and emptied
+his glass as though drinking the health of his own act.
+
+"What!"  It was his mother's desolate little word.
+
+"Young Jolly Forsyte and I went down there together."
+
+"You didn't sign?" from Uncle Soames.
+
+"Rather!  We go into camp on Monday."
+
+"I say!" cried Imogen.
+
+All looked at James.  He was leaning forward with his hand behind
+his ear.
+
+"What's that?" he said.  "What's he saying?  I can't hear."
+
+Emily reached forward to pat Val's hand.
+
+"It's only that Val has joined the Yeomanry, James; it's very nice
+for him.  He'll look his best in uniform."
+
+"Joined the--rubbish!" came from James, tremulously loud.  "You
+can't see two yards before your nose.  He--he'll have to go out
+there.  Why! he'll be fighting before he knows where he is."
+
+Val saw Imogen's eyes admiring him, and his mother still and
+fashionable with her handkerchief before her lips.
+
+Suddenly his uncle spoke.
+
+"You're under age."
+
+"I thought of that," smiled Val; "I gave my age as twenty-one."
+
+He heard his grandmother's admiring, "Well, Val, that was plucky of
+you;" was conscious of Warmson deferentially filling his champagne
+glass; and of his grandfather's voice moaning: "I don't know
+what'll become of you if you go on like this."
+
+Imogen was patting his shoulder, his uncle looking at him sidelong;
+only his mother sat unmoving, till, affected by her stillness, Val
+said:
+
+"It's all right, you know; we shall soon have them on the run.  I
+only hope I shall come in for something."
+
+He felt elated, sorry, tremendously important all at once.  This
+would show Uncle Soames, and all the Forsytes, how to be sportsmen.
+He had certainly done something heroic and exceptional in giving
+his age as twenty-one.
+
+Emily's voice brought him back to earth.
+
+"You mustn't have a second glass, James.  Warmson!"
+
+"Won't they be astonished at Timothy's!" burst out Imogen.  "I'd
+give anything to see their faces.  Do you have a sword, Val, or
+only a popgun?"
+
+"What made you?"
+
+His uncle's voice produced a slight chill in the pit of Val's
+stomach.  Made him?  How answer that?  He was grateful for his
+grandmother's comfortable:
+
+"Well, I think it's very plucky of Val.  I'm sure he'll make a
+splendid soldier; he's just the figure for it.  We shall all be
+proud of him."
+
+"What had young Jolly Forsyte to do with it?  Why did you go
+together?" pursued Soames, uncannily relentless.  "I thought you
+weren't friendly with him?"
+
+"I'm not," mumbled Val, "but I wasn't going to be beaten by him."
+He saw his uncle look at him quite differently, as if approving.
+His grandfather was nodding too, his grandmother tossing her head.
+They all approved of his not being beaten by that cousin of his.
+There must be a reason!  Val was dimly conscious of some disturbing
+point outside his range of vision; as it might be, the unlocated
+centre of a cyclone.  And, staring at his uncle's face, he had a
+quite unaccountable vision of a woman with dark eyes, gold hair,
+and a white neck, who smelt nice, and had pretty silken clothes
+which he had liked feeling when he was quite small.  By Jove, yes!
+Aunt Irene!  She used to kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once,
+playfully, because he liked it--so soft.  His grandfather was
+speaking:
+
+"What's his father doing?"
+
+"He's away in Paris," Val said, staring at the very queer
+expression on his uncle's face, like--like that of a snarling dog.
+
+"Artists!" said James.  The word coming from the very bottom of his
+soul, broke up the dinner.
+
+Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-
+fruits of heroism, like medlars over-ripe.
+
+She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor's at once and
+have his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they
+gave him.  But he could feel that she was very much upset.  It was
+on his lips to console her with the spoken thought that he would be
+out of the way of that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen,
+and the knowledge that his mother would not be out of the way,
+restrained him.  He felt aggrieved that she did not seem more proud
+of him.  When Imogen had gone to bed, he risked the emotional.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother."
+
+"Well, I must make the best of it.  We must try and get you a
+commission as soon as we can; then you won't have to rough it so.
+Do you know any drill, Val?"
+
+"Not a scrap."
+
+"I hope they won't worry you much.  I must take you about to get
+the things to-morrow.  Good-night; kiss me."
+
+With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, 'I
+hope they won't worry you much,' in his ears, he sat down to a
+cigarette, before a dying fire.  The heat was out of him--the glow
+of cutting a dash.  It was all a damned heart-aching bore.  'I'll
+be even with that chap Jolly,' he thought, trailing up the stairs,
+past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a
+sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob.
+
+And soon only one of the diners at James' was awake--Soames, in his
+bedroom above his father's.
+
+So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris--what was he doing there?
+Hanging round Irene!  The last report from Polteed had hinted that
+there might be something soon.  Could it be this?  That fellow,
+with his beard and his cursed amused way of speaking--son of the
+old man who had given him the nickname 'Man of Property,' and
+bought the fatal house from him.  Soames had ever resented having
+had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never forgiven his uncle for
+having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.
+
+Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across
+the Park.  Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of
+traffic; a frost coming; bare trees; a star or two.  'I'll see
+Polteed to-morrow,' he thought.  'By God!  I'm mad, I think, to
+want her still.  That fellow!  If...?  Um!  No!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR
+
+
+Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin--
+Hill on Sunday morning.  He had sent no word beforehand, so walked
+up from the station, entering his domain by the coppice gate.
+Coming to the log seat fashioned out of an old fallen trunk, he sat
+down, first laying his overcoat on it.
+
+'Lumbago!'  he thought; 'that's what love ends in at my time of
+life!'  And suddenly Irene seemed very near, just as she had been
+that day of rambling at Fontainebleau when they had sat on a log to
+eat their lunch.  Hauntingly near!  Odour drawn out of fallen
+leaves by the pale-filtering sunlight soaked his nostrils.  'I'm
+glad it isn't spring,' he thought.  With the scent of sap, and the
+song of birds, and the bursting of the blossoms, it would have been
+unbearable!  'I hope I shall be over it by then, old fool that I
+am!' and picking up his coat, he walked on into the field.  He
+passed the pond and mounted the hill slowly.
+
+Near the top a hoarse barking greeted him.  Up on the lawn above
+the fernery he could see his old dog Balthasar.  The animal, whose
+dim eyes took his master for a stranger, was warning the world
+against him.  Jolyon gave his special whistle.  Even at that
+distance of a hundred yards and more he could see the dawning
+recognition in the obese brown-white body.  The old dog got off his
+haunches, and his tail, close-curled over his back, began a feeble,
+excited fluttering; he came waddling forward, gathered momentum,
+and disappeared over the edge of the fernery.  Jolyon expected to
+meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar was not there, and,
+rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery.  On his fat side,
+looking up with eyes already glazing, the old dog lay.
+
+"What is it, my poor old man?" cried Jolyon.  Balthasar's curled
+and fluffy tail just moved; his filming eyes seemed saying: "I
+can't get up, master, but I'm glad to see you."
+
+Jolyon knelt down; his eyes, very dimmed, could hardly see the
+slowly ceasing heave of the dog's side.  He raised the head a
+little--very heavy.
+
+"What is it, dear man?  Where are you hurt?" The tail fluttered
+once; the eyes lost the look of life.  Jolyon passed his hands all
+over the inert warm bulk.  There was nothing--the heart had simply
+failed in that obese body from the emotion of his master's return.
+Jolyon could feel the muzzle, where a few whitish bristles grew,
+cooling already against his lips.  He stayed for some minutes
+kneeling; with his hand beneath the stiffening head.  The body was
+very heavy when he bore it to the top of the field; leaves had
+drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of them; there was
+no wind, and they would keep him from curious eyes until the
+afternoon.  'I'll bury him myself,' he thought.  Eighteen years had
+gone since he first went into the St. John's Wood house with that
+tiny puppy in his pocket.  Strange that the old dog should die just
+now!  Was it an omen?  He turned at the gate to look back at that
+russet mound, then went slowly towards the house, very choky in the
+throat.
+
+June was at home; she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news of
+Jolly's enlistment.  His patriotism had conquered her feeling for
+the Boers.  The atmosphere of his house was strange and pocketty
+when Jolyon came in and told them of the dog Balthasar's death.
+The news had a unifying effect.  A link with the past had snapped--
+the dog Balthasar!  Two of them could remember nothing before his
+day; to June he represented the last years of her grandfather; to
+Jolyon that life of domestic stress and aesthetic struggle before
+he came again into the kingdom of his father's love and wealth!
+And he was gone!
+
+In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out to
+the field.  They chose a spot close to the russet mound, so that
+they need not carry him far, and, carefully cutting off the surface
+turf, began to dig.  They dug in silence for ten minutes, and then
+rested.
+
+"Well, old man," said Jolyon, "so you thought you ought?"
+
+"Yes," answered Jolly; "I don't want to a bit, of course."
+
+How exactly those words represented Jolyon's own state of mind
+
+"I admire you for it, old boy.  I don't believe I should have done
+it at your age--too much of a Forsyte, I'm afraid.  But I suppose
+the type gets thinner with each generation.  Your son, if you have
+one, may be a pure altruist; who knows?"
+
+"He won't be like me, then, Dad; I'm beastly selfish."
+
+"No, my dear, that you clearly are not."  Jolly shook his head, and
+they dug again.
+
+"Strange life a dog's," said Jolyon suddenly: "The only four-footer
+with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!"
+
+Jolly looked at his father.
+
+"Do you believe in God, Dad?  I've never known."
+
+At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to
+make a light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back
+tried by the digging.
+
+"What do you mean by God?" he said; "there are two irreconcilable
+ideas of God.  There's the Unknowable Creative Principle--one
+believes in That.  And there's the Sum of altruism in man naturally
+one believes in That."
+
+"I see.  That leaves out Christ, doesn't it?"
+
+Jolyon stared.  Christ, the link between those two ideas!  Out of
+the mouth of babes!  Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at
+last!  The sublime poem of the Christ life was man's attempt to
+join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God.  And since the
+Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative
+Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe, a worse link
+might have been chosen after all!  Funny--how one went through life
+without seeing it in that sort of way!
+
+"What do you think, old man?" he said.
+
+Jolly frowned.  "Of course, my first year we talked a good bit
+about that sort of thing.  But in the second year one gives it up;
+I don't know why--it's awfully interesting."
+
+Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it his
+first year at Cambridge, and given it up in his second.
+
+"I suppose," said Jolly, "it's the second God, you mean, that old
+Balthasar had a sense of."
+
+"Yes, or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of
+something outside himself."
+
+"But wasn't that just selfish emotion, really?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head.  "No, dogs are not pure Forsytes, they love
+something outside themselves."
+
+Jolly smiled.
+
+"Well, I think I'm one," he said.  "You know, I only enlisted
+because I dared Val Dartie to."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"We bar each other," said Jolly shortly.
+
+"Ah!" muttered Jolyon.  So the feud went on, unto the third
+generation--this modern feud which had no overt expression?
+
+'Shall I tell the boy about it?' he thought.  But to what end--if
+he had to stop short of his own part?
+
+And Jolly thought: 'It's for Holly to let him know about that chap.
+If she doesn't, it means she doesn't want him told, and I should be
+sneaking.  Anyway, I've stopped it.  I'd better leave well alone!'
+
+So they dug on in silence, till Jolyon said:
+
+"Now, old man, I think it's big enough."  And, resting on their
+spades, they gazed down into the hole where a few leaves had
+drifted already on a sunset wind.
+
+"I can't bear this part of it," said Jolyon suddenly.
+
+"Let me do it, Dad.  He never cared much for me."
+
+Jolyon shook his head.
+
+"We'll lift him very gently, leaves and all.  I'd rather not see
+him again.  I'll take his head.  Now!  "
+
+With extreme care they raised the old dog's body, whose faded tan
+and white showed here and there under the leaves stirred by the
+wind.  They laid it, heavy, cold, and unresponsive, in the grave,
+and Jolly spread more leaves over it, while Jolyon, deeply afraid
+to show emotion before his son, began quickly shovelling the earth
+on to that still shape.  There went the past!  If only there were a
+joyful future to look forward to!  It was like stamping down earth
+on one's own life.  They replaced the turf carefully on the smooth
+little mound, and, grateful that they had spared each other's
+feelings, returned to the house arm-in-arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TIMOTHY STAYS THE ROT
+
+
+On Forsyte 'Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together
+with the report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become a
+Red Cross nurse.  These events were so extreme, so subversive of
+pure Forsyteism, as to have a binding effect upon the family, and
+Timothy's was thronged next Sunday afternoon by members trying to
+find out what they thought about it all, and exchange with each
+other a sense of family credit.  Giles and Jesse Hayman would no
+longer defend the coast but go to South Africa quite soon; Jolly
+and Val would be following in April; as to June--well, you never
+knew what she would really do.
+
+The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news from
+the seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in
+startling fashion by Timothy.  The youngest of the old Forsytes--
+scarcely eighty, in fact popularly supposed to resemble their
+father, 'Superior Dosset,' even in his best-known characteristic of
+drinking Sherry--had been invisible for so many years that he was
+almost mythical.  A long generation had elapsed since the risks of
+a publisher's business had worked on his nerves at the age of
+forty, so that he had got out with a mere thirty-five thousand
+pounds in the world, and started to make his living by careful
+investment.  Putting by every year, at compound interest, he had
+doubled his capital in forty years without having once known what
+it was like to shake in his shoes over money matters.  He was now
+putting aside some two thousand a year, and, with the care he was
+taking of himself, expected, so Aunt Hester said, to double his
+capital again before he died.  What he would do with it then, with
+his sisters dead and himself dead, was often mockingly queried by
+free spirits such as Francie, Euphemia, or young Nicholas' second,
+Christopher, whose spirit was so free that he had actually said he
+was going on the stage.  All admitted, however, that this was best
+known to Timothy himself, and possibly to Soames, who never
+divulged a secret.
+
+Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and
+robust appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion, grey
+hair, and little of the refinement of feature with which most of
+the Forsytes had been endowed by 'Superior Dosset's' wife, a woman
+of some beauty and a gentle temperament.  It was known that he had
+taken surprising interest in the war, sticking flags into a map
+ever since it began, and there was uneasiness as to what would
+happen if the English were driven into the sea, when it would be
+almost impossible for him to put the flags in the right places.  As
+to his knowledge of family movements or his views about them,
+little was known, save that Aunt Hester was always declaring that
+he was very upset.  It was, then, in the nature of a portent when
+Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after the evacuation of Spion Kop,
+became conscious, one after the other, of a presence seated in the
+only really comfortable armchair, back to the light, concealing the
+lower part of his face with a large hand, and were greeted by the
+awed voice of Aunt Hester:
+
+"Your Uncle Timothy, my dear."
+
+Timothy's greeting to them all was somewhat identical; and rather,
+as it were, passed over by him than expressed:
+
+"How de do?  How de do?  'Xcuse me gettin' up!"
+
+Francie was present, and Eustace had come in his car; Winifred had
+brought Imogen, breaking the ice of the restitution proceedings
+with the warmth of family appreciation at Val's enlistment; and
+Marian Tweetyman with the last news of Giles and Jesse.  These with
+Aunt Juley and Hester, young Nicholas, Euphemia, and--of all
+people!--George, who had come with Eustace in the car, constituted
+an assembly worthy of the family's palmiest days.  There was not
+one chair vacant in the whole of the little drawing-room, and
+anxiety was felt lest someone else should arrive.
+
+The constraint caused by Timothy's presence having worn off a
+little, conversation took a military turn.  George asked Aunt Juley
+when she was going out with the Red Cross, almost reducing her to a
+state of gaiety; whereon he turned to Nicholas and said:
+
+"Young Nick's a warrior bold, isn't he?  When's he going to don the
+wild khaki?"
+
+Young Nicholas, smiling with a sort of sweet deprecation, intimated
+that of course his mother was very anxious.
+
+"The Dromios are off, I hear," said George, turning to Marian
+Tweetyman; "we shall all be there soon.  En avant, the Forsytes!
+Roll, bowl, or pitch!  Who's for a cooler?"
+
+Aunt Juley gurgled, George was so droll!  Should Hester get
+Timothy's map?  Then he could show them all where they were.
+
+At a sound from Timothy, interpreted as assent, Aunt Hester left
+the room.
+
+George pursued his image of the Forsyte advance, addressing Timothy
+as Field Marshal; and Imogen, whom he had noted at once for 'a
+pretty filly,'--as Vivandiere; and holding his top hat between his
+knees, he began to beat it with imaginary drumsticks.  The
+reception accorded to his fantasy was mixed.  All laughed--George
+was licensed; but all felt that the family was being 'rotted'; and
+this seemed to them unnatural, now that it was going to give five
+of its members to the service of the Queen.  George might go too
+far; and there was relief when he got up, offered his arm to Aunt
+Juley, marched up to Timothy, saluted him, kissed his aunt with
+mock passion, said, "Oh!  what a treat, dear papa!  Come on,
+Eustace!" and walked out, followed by the grave and fastidious
+Eustace, who had never smiled.
+
+Aunt Juley's bewildered, "Fancy not waiting for the map!  You
+mustn't mind him, Timothy.  He's so droll!" broke the hush, and
+Timothy removed the hand from his mouth.
+
+"I don't know what things are comin' to," he was heard to say.
+"What's all this about goin' out there?  That's not the way to beat
+those Boers."
+
+Francie alone had the hardihood to observe: " What is, then, Uncle
+Timothy?"
+
+"All this new-fangled volunteerin' and expense--lettin' money out
+of the country."
+
+Just then Aunt Hester brought in the map, handling it like a baby
+with eruptions.  With the assistance of Euphemia it was laid on the
+piano, a small Colwood grand, last played on, it was believed, the
+summer before Aunt Ann died, thirteen years ago.  Timothy rose.  He
+walked over to the piano, and stood looking at his map while they
+all gathered round.
+
+"There you are," he said; "that's the position up to date; and very
+poor it is.  H'm!"
+
+"Yes," said Francie, greatly daring, "but how are you going to
+alter it, Uncle Timothy, without more men?"
+
+"Men!" said Timothy; "you don't want men--wastin' the country's
+money.  You want a Napoleon, he'd settle it in a month."
+
+"But if you haven't got him, Uncle Timothy?"
+
+"That's their business," replied Timothy.  "What have we kept the
+Army up for--to eat their heads off in time of peace!  They ought
+to be ashamed of themselves, comin' on the country to help them
+like this!  Let every man stick to his business, and we shall get
+on."
+
+And looking round him, he added almost angrily:
+
+"Volunteerin', indeed!  Throwin' good money after bad!  We must
+save!  Conserve energy that's the only way."  And with a prolonged
+sound, not quite a sniff and not quite a snort, he trod on
+Euphemia's toe, and went out, leaving a sensation and a faint scent
+of barley-sugar behind him.
+
+The effect of something said with conviction by one who has
+evidently made a sacrifice to say it is ever considerable.  And the
+eight Forsytes left behind, all women except young Nicholas, were
+silent for a moment round the map.  Then Francie said:
+
+"Really, I think he's right, you know.  After all, what is the Army
+for?  They ought to have known.  It's only encouraging them."
+
+"My dear!" cried Aunt Juley, "but they've been so progressive.
+Think of their giving up their scarlet.  They were always so proud
+of it.  And now they all look like convicts.  Hester and I were
+saying only yesterday we were sure they must feel it very much.
+Fancy what the Iron Duke would have said!"
+
+"The new colour's very smart," said Winifred; "Val looks quite nice
+in his."
+
+Aunt Juley sighed.
+
+"I do so wonder what Jolyon's boy is like.  To think we've never
+seen him!  His father must be so proud of him."
+
+"His father's in Paris," said Winifred.
+
+Aunt Hester's shoulder was seen to mount suddenly, as if to ward
+off her sister's next remark, for Juley's crumpled cheeks had
+gushed.
+
+"We had dear little Mrs. MacAnder here yesterday, just back from
+Paris.  And whom d'you think she saw there in the street?  You'll
+never guess."
+
+"We shan't try, Auntie," said Euphemia.
+
+"Irene!  Imagine!  After all this time; walking with a fair
+beard...."
+
+"Auntie! you'll kill me!  A fair beard...."
+
+"I was going to say," said Aunt Juley severely, "a fair-bearded
+gentleman.  And not a day older; she was always so pretty," she
+added, with a sort of lingering apology.
+
+"Oh! tell us about her, Auntie," cried Imogen; "I can just remember
+her.  She's the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn't she?  And
+they're such fun."
+
+Aunt Hester sat down.  Really, Juley had done it now!
+
+"She wasn't much of a skeleton as I remember her," murmured
+Euphemia, "extremely well-covered."
+
+"My dear!" said Aunt Juley, "what a peculiar way of putting it--not
+very nice."
+
+"No, but what was she like?" persisted Imogen.
+
+"I'll tell you, my child," said Francie; "a kind of modern Venus,
+very well-dressed."
+
+Euphemia said sharply: "Venus was never dressed, and she had blue
+eyes of melting sapphire."
+
+At this juncture Nicholas took his leave.
+
+"Mrs. Nick is awfully strict," said Francie with a laugh.
+
+"She has six children," said Aunt Juley; "it's very proper she
+should be careful."
+
+"Was Uncle Soames awfully fond of her?" pursued the inexorable
+Imogen, moving her dark luscious eyes from face to face.
+
+Aunt Hester made a gesture of despair, just as Aunt Juley answered:
+
+"Yes, your Uncle Soames was very much attached to her."
+
+"I suppose she ran off with someone?"
+
+"No, certainly not; that is--not precisely.'
+
+"What did she do, then, Auntie?"
+
+"Come along, Imogen," said Winifred, "we must be getting back."
+
+But Aunt Juley interjected resolutely: "She--she didn't behave at
+all well."
+
+"Oh, bother!" cried Imogen; "that's as far as I ever get."
+
+"Well, my dear," said Francie, "she had a love affair which ended
+with the young man's death; and then she left your uncle.  I always
+rather liked her."
+
+"She used to give me chocolates," murmured Imogen, "and smell
+nice."
+
+"Of course!" remarked Euphemia.
+
+"Not of course at all!" replied Francie, who used a particularly
+expensive essence of gillyflower herself.
+
+"I can't think what we are about," said Aunt Juley, raising her
+hands, "talking of such things!"
+
+"Was she divorced?" asked Imogen from the door.
+
+"Certainly not," cried Aunt Juley; "that is--certainly not."
+
+A sound was heard over by the far door.  Timothy had re-entered the
+back drawing-room.  "I've come for my map," he said.  "Who's been
+divorced?"
+
+"No one, Uncle," replied Francie with perfect truth.
+
+Timothy took his map off the piano.
+
+"Don't let's have anything of that sort in the family," he said.
+"All this enlistin's bad enough.  The country's breakin' up; I
+don't know what we're comin' to."  He shook a thick finger at the
+room: "Too many women nowadays, and they don't know what they
+want."
+
+So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went out
+as if afraid of being answered.
+
+The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued murmur,
+out of which emerged Francie's, "Really, the Forsytes!" and Aunt
+Juley's: "He must have his feet in mustard and hot water to-night,
+Hester; will you tell Jane?  The blood has gone to his head again,
+I'm afraid...."
+
+That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after dinner,
+she dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:
+
+"Hester, I can't think where I've heard that dear Soames wants
+Irene to come back to him again.  Who was it told us that George
+had made a funny drawing of him with the words, 'He won't be happy
+till he gets it'?"
+
+"Eustace," answered Aunt Hester from behind The Times; "he had it
+in his pocket, but he wouldn't show it us."
+
+Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating.  The clock ticked, The Times
+crackled, the fire sent forth its rustling purr.  Aunt Juley
+dropped another stitch.
+
+"Hester," she said, "I have had such a dreadful thought."
+
+"Then don't tell me," said Aunt Hester quickly.
+
+"Oh!  but I must.  You can't think how dreadful" Her voice sank to
+a whisper:
+
+"Jolyon--Jolyon, they say, has a--has a fair beard, now."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+PROGRESS OF THE CHASE
+
+
+Two days after the dinner at James', Mr. Polteed provided Soames
+with food for thought.
+
+"A gentleman," he said, consulting the key concealed in his left
+hand, "47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17 during
+the last month in Paris.  But at present there seems to have been
+nothing very conclusive.  The meetings have all been in public
+places, without concealment--restaurants, the Opera, the Comique,
+the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and so forth.
+She has not yet been traced to his rooms, nor vice versa.  They
+went to Fontainebleau--but nothing of value.  In short, the
+situation is promising, but requires patience."  And, looking up
+suddenly, he added:
+
+"One rather curious point--47 has the same name as--er- 31!"
+
+'The fellow knows I'm her husband,' thought Soames.
+
+"Christian name--an odd one--Jolyon," continued Mr. Polteed.  "We
+know his address in Paris and his residence here.  We don't wish,
+of course, to be running a wrong hare."
+
+"Go on with it, but be careful," said Soames doggedly.
+
+Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his
+secret made him all the more reticent.
+
+"Excuse me," said Mr. Polteed, "I'll just see if there's anything
+fresh in."
+
+He returned with some letters.  Relocking the door, he glanced at
+the envelopes.
+
+"Yes, here's a personal one from 19 to myself."
+
+"Well?" said Soames.
+
+ "Um!" said Mr. Polteed, "she says: '47 left for England to-day.
+Address on his baggage: Robin Hill.  Parted from 17 in Louvre
+Gallery at 3.30; nothing very striking.  Thought it best to stay
+and continue observation of 17.  You will deal with 47 in England
+if you think desirable, no doubt.'"  And Mr. Polteed lifted an
+unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing
+material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of
+business.  "Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful make-up.
+Not cheap, but earns her money well.  There's no suspicion of being
+shadowed so far.  But after a time, as you know, sensitive people
+are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything definite to
+go on.  I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and keeping an eye
+on 47.  We can't get at correspondence without great risk.  I
+hardly advise that at this stage.  But you can tell your client
+that it's looking up very well."  And again his narrowed eyes
+gleamed at his taciturn customer.
+
+"No," said Soames suddenly, "I prefer that you should keep the
+watch going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with this
+end."
+
+"Very well," replied Mr. Polteed, "we can do it.
+
+"What--what is the manner between them?"
+
+"I'll read you what she says," said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau
+drawer and taking out a file of papers; "she sums it up somewhere
+confidentially.  Yes, here it is!  ' 17 very attractive--conclude
+47, longer in the tooth' (slang for age, you know)--'distinctly
+gone--waiting his time--17 perhaps holding off for terms,
+impossible to say without knowing more.  But inclined to think on
+the whole--doesn't know her mind--likely to act on impulse some
+day.  Both have style."'
+
+"What does that mean?" said Soames between close lips.
+
+"Well," murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white
+teeth, "an expression we use.  In other words, it's not likely to
+be a weekend business--they'll come together seriously or not at
+all."
+
+"H'm!" muttered Soames, "that's all, is it?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Polteed, "but quite promising."
+
+'Spider!' thought Soames.  "Good-day!"
+
+He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria
+Station and take the Underground into the City.  For so late in
+January it was warm; sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the
+frosty grass--an illumined cobweb of a day.
+
+Little spiders--and great spiders!  And the greatest spinner of
+all, his own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads
+round any clear way out.  What was that fellow hanging round Irene
+for?  Was it really as Polteed suggested?  Or was Jolyon but taking
+compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it--sentimental
+radical chap that he had always been?  If it were, indeed, as
+Polteed hinted!  Soames stood still.  It could not be!  The fellow
+was seven years older than himself, no better looking!  No richer!
+What attraction had he?
+
+'Besides, he's come back,' he thought; 'that doesn't look---I'll go
+and see him!' and, taking out a card, he wrote:
+
+"If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall be
+at the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could come to
+the Hotch Potch if you prefer it.  I want to see you. --S.  F."
+
+He walked up St.  James's Street and confided it to the porter at
+the Hotch Potch.
+
+"Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in," he said, and
+took one of the new motor cabs into the City....
+
+Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face
+towards the Connoisseurs.  What did Soames want now?  Had he got
+wind of Paris?  And stepping across St. James's Street, he
+determined to make no secret of his visit.  'But it won't do,' he
+thought, 'to let him know she's there, unless he knows already.'
+In this complicated state of mind he was conducted to where Soames
+was drinking tea in a small bay-window.
+
+"No tea, thanks," said Jolyon, "but I'll go on smoking if I may."
+
+The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were
+lighted; the two cousins sat waiting on each other.
+
+"You've been in Paris, I hear," said Soames at last.
+
+"Yes; just back."
+
+"Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?" Jolyon
+nodded.
+
+"You didn't happen to see Irene, I suppose.  It appears she's
+abroad somewhere."
+
+Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: "Yes, I saw
+her."
+
+"How was she?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his chair.
+
+"When I saw you last," he said, "I was in two minds.  We talked,
+and you expressed your opinion.  I don't wish to reopen that
+discussion.  I only wanted to say this: My position with her is
+extremely difficult.  I don't want you to go using your influence
+against me.  What happened is a very long time ago.  I'm going to
+ask her to let bygones be bygones."
+
+"You have asked her, you know," murmured Jolyon.
+
+"The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock.  But the more
+she thinks of it, the more she must see that it's the only way out
+for both of us."
+
+"That's not my impression of her state of mind," said Jolyon with
+particular calm.  "And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the
+matter if you think reason comes into it at all."
+
+He saw his cousin's pale face grow paler--he had used, without
+knowing it, Irene's own words.
+
+"Thanks," muttered Soames, "but I see things perhaps more plainly
+than you think.  I only want to be sure that you won't try to
+influence her against me."
+
+"I don't know what makes you think I have any influence," said
+Jolyon; "but if I have I'm bound to use it in the direction of what
+I think is her happiness.  I am what they call a 'feminist,' I
+believe."
+
+"Feminist!" repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time.  "Does
+that mean that you're against me?"
+
+"Bluntly," said Jolyon, "I'm against any woman living with any man
+whom she definitely dislikes.  It appears to me rotten."
+
+"And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into her
+mind."
+
+"I am not likely to be seeing her."
+
+"Not going back to Paris?"
+
+"Not so far as I know," said Jolyon, conscious of the intent
+watchfulness in Soames' face.
+
+"Well, that's all I had to say.  Anyone who comes between man and
+wife, you know, incurs heavy responsibility."
+
+Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved
+away, leaving Soames staring after him.  ' We Forsytes,' thought
+Jolyon, hailing a cab, 'are very civilised.  With simpler folk that
+might have come to a row.  If it weren't for my boy going to the
+war....'  The war!  A gust of his old doubt swept over him.  A
+precious war!  Domination of peoples or of women!  Attempts to
+master and possess those who did not want you!  The negation of
+gentle decency!  Possession, vested rights; and anyone 'agin' 'em--
+outcast!  'Thank Heaven!'  he thought, 'I always felt "agin" 'em,
+anyway!'  Yes!  Even before his first disastrous marriage he could
+remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial
+suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed.  Parsons
+would have it that freedom of soul and body were quite different
+things!  Pernicious doctrine!  Body and soul could not thus be
+separated.  Free will was the strength of any tie, and not its
+weakness.  'I ought to have told Soames,' he thought, 'that I think
+him comic.  Ah! but he's tragic, too!'   Was there anything,
+indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own
+possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even enter
+fully into what another person felt!  'I must write and warn her,'
+he thought; 'he's going to have another try.'  And all the way home
+to Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son
+which prevented him from posting back to Paris....
+
+But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing
+ache--a jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this
+fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of
+resistance to his way out.  'Does that mean that you're against
+me?' he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question.
+Feminist!  Phrasey fellow!  'I mustn't rush things,' he thought.
+'I have some breathing space; he's not going back to Paris, unless
+he was lying.  I'll let the spring come!'  Though how the spring
+could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell.
+And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from
+pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: 'Nothing
+seems any good--nothing seems worth while.  I'm loney--that's the
+trouble.'
+
+He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark
+street below a church--passing, turning her neck so that he caught
+the gleam of her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark
+hat, which had gold spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind.
+He opened his eyes--so vividly he had seen her!  A woman was
+passing below, but not she!  Oh no, there was nothing there!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HERE WE ARE AGAIN!'
+
+
+Imogen's frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her
+mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of
+March.  With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection.  It
+took her mind off the slowly approaching rite which would give her
+a freedom but doubtfully desired; took her mind, too, off her boy
+and his fast approaching departure for a war from which the news
+remained disquieting.  Like bees busy on summer flowers, or bright
+gadflies hovering and darting over spiky autumn blossoms, she and
+her 'little daughter,' tall nearly as herself and with a bust
+measurement not far inferior, hovered in the shops of Regent
+Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond Street,
+lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics.  Dozens of young
+women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before
+Winifred and Imogen, draped in 'creations.'  The models--'Very new,
+modom; quite the latest thing--' which those two reluctantly turned
+down, would have filled a museum; the models which they were
+obliged to have nearly emptied James' bank.  It was no good doing
+things by halves, Winifred felt, in view of the need for making
+this first and sole untarnished season a conspicuous success.
+Their patience in trying the patience of those impersonal creatures
+who swam about before them could alone have been displayed by such
+as were moved by faith.  It was for Winifred a long prostration
+before her dear goddess Fashion, fervent as a Catholic might make
+before the Virgin; for Imogen an experience by no means too
+unpleasant--she often looked so nice, and flattery was implicit
+everywhere: in a word it was 'amusing.'
+
+On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted
+Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and
+Baker's, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with cream,
+turned homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening touched with
+spring.  Opening the door--freshly painted a light olive-green;
+nothing neglected that year to give Imogen a good send-off--
+Winifred passed towards the silver basket to see if anyone had
+called, and suddenly her nostrils twitched.  What was that scent?
+
+Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood
+absorbed.  Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her
+breast, Winifred said:
+
+"Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner."
+
+Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs.  Winifred heard the
+door of her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath.  Was
+it spring tickling her senses--whipping up nostalgia for her
+'clown,' against all wisdom and outraged virtue?  A male scent!  A
+faint reek of cigars and lavender-water not smelt since that early
+autumn night six months ago, when she had called him 'the limit.'
+Whence came it, or was it ghost of scent--sheer emanation from
+memory?  She looked round her.  Nothing--not a thing, no tiniest
+disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom.  A little day-dream
+of a scent--illusory, saddening, silly!  In the silver basket were
+new cards, two with 'Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,' and one with 'Mr.
+Polegate Thom' thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled severe.
+'I must be tired,' she thought, 'I'll go and lie down.'  Upstairs
+the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it
+evening light; and she passed on up to her bedroom.  This, too, was
+half-curtained and dim, for it was six o'clock.  Winifred threw off
+her coat--that scent again!--then stood, as if shot, transfixed
+against the bed-rail.  Something dark had risen from the sofa in
+the far corner.  A word of horror--in her family--escaped her:
+"God!"
+
+"It's I--Monty," said a voice.
+
+Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch
+of the light hanging above her dressing-table.  He appeared just on
+the rim of the light's circumference, emblazoned from the absence
+of his watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown, but--yes!--
+split at the toecap.  His chest and face were shadowy.  Surely he
+was thin--or was it a trick of the light?  He advanced, lighted now
+from toe-cap to the top of his dark head-surely a little grizzled!
+His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost
+boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know
+about his face.  There was no pin in his tie.  His suit--ah!--she
+knew that--but how unpressed, unglossy!  She stared again at the
+toe-cap of his boot.  Something big and relentless had been 'at
+him,' had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him.  And she
+stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the
+toe.
+
+"Well!" he said, "I got the order.  I'm back."
+
+Winifred's bosom began to heave.  The nostalgia for her husband
+which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper
+jealousy than any she had felt yet.  There he was--a dark, and as
+if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self!  What force had
+done this to him--squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind!
+That woman!
+
+"I'm back," he said again.  "I've had a beastly time.  By God!  I
+came steerage.  I've got nothing but what I stand up in, and that
+bag."
+
+"And who has the rest?" cried Winifred, suddenly alive.  "How dared
+you come?  You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order
+to come back.  Don't touch me!"
+
+They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so
+many years of nights together.  Many times, yes--many times she had
+wanted him back.  But now that he had come she was filled with this
+cold and deadly resentment.  He put his hand up to his moustache;
+but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar way, he just
+pulled it downwards.
+
+"Gad!" he said: "If you knew the time I've had!"
+
+"I'm glad I don't!"
+
+"Are the kids all right?"
+
+Winifred nodded.  "How did you get in?"
+
+"With my key."
+
+"Then the maids don't know.  You can't stay here, Monty."
+
+He uttered a little sardonic laugh.
+
+"Where then?"
+
+"Anywhere."
+
+"Well, look at me!  That--that damned...."
+
+"If you mention her," cried Winifred, "I go straight out to Park
+Lane and I don't come back."
+
+Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it
+moved her.  He shut his eyes.  It was as if he had said: 'All
+right!  I'm dead to the world!'
+
+"You can have a room for the night," she said; "your things are
+still here.  Only Imogen is at home."
+
+He leaned back against the bed-rail.  " Well, it's in your hands,"
+and his own made a writhing movement.  "I've been through it.  You
+needn't hit too hard--it isn't worth while.  I've been frightened;
+I've been frightened, Freddie."
+
+That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver
+through Winifred.
+
+'What am I to do with him?' she thought.  'What in God's name am I
+to do with him?'
+
+"Got a cigarette?"
+
+She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she
+couldn't sleep at night, and lighted it.  With that action the
+matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.
+
+"Go and have a hot bath.  I'll put some clothes out for you in the
+dressing-room.  We can talk later."
+
+He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her--they looked half-dead, or was
+it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?
+
+'He's not the same,' she thought.  He would never be quite the same
+again!  But what would he be?
+
+"All right!"   he said, and went towards the door.  He even moved
+differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it
+is worth while to move at all.
+
+When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she
+put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room,
+then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky.
+Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment at the bathroom
+door, she went down and out.  In the street she hesitated.  Past
+seven o'clock!  Would Soames be at his Club or at Park Lane?  She
+turned towards the latter.  Back!
+
+Soames had always feared it--she had sometimes hoped it....  Back!
+So like him--clown that he was--with this: 'Here we are again!' to
+make fools of them all--of the Law, of Soames, of herself!
+
+Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging
+over her and the children!  What a relief!  Ah!  but how to accept
+his return?  That 'woman' had ravaged him, taken from him passion
+such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not
+thought him capable of.  There was the sting!  That selfish,
+blatant 'clown' of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred,
+had been swept and ungarnished by another woman!  Insulting!  Too
+insulting!  Not right, not decent to take him back!  And yet she
+had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now!  He was as
+much her husband as ever--she had put herself out of court!  And
+all he wanted, no doubt, was money--to keep him in cigars and
+lavender-water!  That scent!  'After all, I'm not old,' she
+thought, 'not old yet!'  But that woman who had reduced him to
+those words: 'I've been through it.  I've been frightened--
+frightened, Freddie!'  She neared her father's house, driven this
+way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing
+her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be
+held against a robbing world.  And so she came to James'.
+
+"Mr. Soames?  In his room?  I'll go up; don't say I'm here."
+
+Her brother was dressing.  She found him before a mirror, tying a
+black bow with an air of despising its ends.
+
+"Hullo!" he said, contemplating her in the glass; "what's wrong?"
+
+"Monty!" said Winifred stonily.
+
+Soames spun round.  "What!"
+
+"Back!"
+
+"Hoist," muttered Soames, "with our own petard.  Why the deuce
+didn't you let me try cruelty?  I always knew it was too much risk
+this way."
+
+"Oh! Don't talk about that!  What shall I do?"
+
+Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.
+
+"Well?" said Winifred impatiently.
+
+"What has he to say for himself?"
+
+"Nothing.  One of his boots is split across the toe."
+
+Soames stared at her.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "of course!  On his beam ends.  So--it begins again!
+This'll about finish father."
+
+"Can't we keep it from him?"
+
+"Impossible.  He has an uncanny flair for anything that's
+worrying."
+
+And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces.
+"There ought to be some way in law," he muttered, "to make him
+safe."
+
+"No," cried Winifred, "I won't be made a fool of again; I'd sooner
+put up with him."
+
+The two stared at each other.  Their hearts were full of feeling,
+but they could give it no expression--Forsytes that they were.
+
+"Where did you leave him?"
+
+"In the bath," and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh.  "The only
+thing he's brought back is lavender-water."
+
+"Steady!" said Soames, "you're thoroughly upset.  I'll go back with
+you."
+
+"What's the use?"
+
+"We ought to make terms with him."
+
+"Terms!  It'll always be the same.  When he recovers--cards and
+betting, drink and ....!"   She was silent, remembering the look on
+her husband's face.  The burnt child--the burnt child.  Perhaps...!
+
+"Recovers?" replied Soames: "Is he ill?"
+
+"No; burnt out; that's all."
+
+Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his
+coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau-de-
+Cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: "We haven't any luck."
+
+And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as
+if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own.
+
+"I'd like to see mother," she said.
+
+"She'll be with father in their room.  Come down quietly to the
+study.  I'll get her."
+
+Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable
+for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine
+collection of Law Reports unopened for many years.  Here she stood,
+with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at
+the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by Soames.
+
+"Oh! my poor dear!" said Emily: "How miserable you look in here!
+This is too bad of him, really!"
+
+As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of
+all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give
+her daughter a good hug.  But there was comfort in her cushioned
+voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace.
+Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred
+said in her most off-hand voice:
+
+"It's all right, Mother; no good fussing."
+
+"I don't see," said Emily, looking at Soames, "why Winifred
+shouldn't tell him that she'll prosecute him if he doesn't keep off
+the premises.  He took her pearls; and if he's not brought them
+back, that's quite enough."
+
+Winifred smiled.  They would all plunge about with suggestions of
+this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and
+that was--nothing.  The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort
+of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground
+in her.  No!  if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home
+without the world knowing.
+
+" Well," said Emily, "come into the diningroom comfortably--you
+must stay and have dinner with us.  Leave it to me to tell your
+father."  And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out
+the light.  Not till then did they see the disaster in the
+corridor.
+
+There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was
+standing with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him, so
+that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut off
+from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert.
+He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if he saw
+before him a frog too large to swallow.
+
+"What's all this?" he said.  "Tell your father?  You never tell me
+anything."
+
+The moment found Emily without reply.  It was Winifred who went up
+to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms,
+said:
+
+"Monty's not gone bankrupt, Father.  He's only come back."
+
+They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad
+she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth
+of root in that shadowy old Forsyte.  Something wry occurred about
+his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long
+silvery whiskers.  Then he said with a sort of dignity: "He'll be
+the death of me.  I knew how it would be."
+
+"You mustn't worry, Father," said Winifred calmly.  "I mean to make
+him behave."
+
+"Ah!" said James.  "Here, take this thing off, I'm hot."  They
+unwound the shawl.  He turned, and walked firmly to the dining-
+room.
+
+"I don't want any soup," he said to Warmson, and sat down in his
+chair.  They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while
+Warmson laid the fourth place.  When he left the room, James said:
+"What's he brought back?"
+
+"Nothing, Father."
+
+James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon.
+"Divorce!" he muttered; "rubbish!  What was I about?  I ought to
+have paid him an allowance to stay out of England.  Soames you go
+and propose it to him."
+
+It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was
+surprised when she said: "No, I'll keep him now he's back; he must
+just behave--that's all."
+
+They all looked at her.  It had always been known that Winifred had
+pluck.
+
+"Out there!" said James elliptically, "who knows what cut-throats!
+You look for his revolver!  Don't go to bed without.  You ought to
+have Warmson to sleep in the house.  I'll see him myself tomorrow."
+
+They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably:
+"That's right, James, we won't have any nonsense."
+
+"Ah!" muttered James darkly, "I can't tell."
+
+The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.
+
+When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father
+good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress
+that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.
+
+"It's all right, Daddy, dear; don't worry.  I shan't need anyone--
+he's quite bland.  I shall only be upset if you worry.  Good-night,
+bless you!"
+
+James repeated the words, "Bless you!" as if he did not quite know
+what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.
+
+She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.
+
+Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed
+in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his
+head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.
+
+Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes
+after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood--
+parched, yet rested by the sun's retreat.  It was as if a little
+dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.
+
+He said apathetically: " I suppose you've been to Park Lane.  How's
+the old man?"
+
+Winifred could not help the bitter answer: "Not dead."
+
+He winced, actually he winced.
+
+"Understand, Monty," she said, "I will not have him worried.  If
+you aren't going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go
+anywhere.  Have you had dinner?"
+
+No.
+
+"Would you like some?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Imogen offered me some.  I didn't want any."
+
+Imogen!  In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.
+
+"So you've seen her?  What did she say?"
+
+"She gave me a kiss."
+
+With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed.
+'Yes!' she thought, 'he cares for her, not for me a bit.'
+
+Dartie's eyes were moving from side to side.
+
+"Does she know about me?" he said.
+
+It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed.
+He minded their knowing!
+
+"No.  Val knows.  The others don't; they only know you went away."
+
+She heard him sigh with relief.
+
+"But they shall know," she said firmly, "if you give me cause."
+
+"All right!" he muttered, "hit me!  I'm down!"
+
+Winifred went up to the bed.  "Look here, Monty!  I don't want to
+hit you.  I don't want to hurt you.  I shan't allude to anything.
+I'm not going to worry.  What's the use?" She was silent a moment.
+"I can't stand any more, though, and I won't!  You'd better know.
+You've made me suffer.  But I used to be fond of you.  For the sake
+of that...."  She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with
+the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand
+suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.
+
+She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings,
+thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the
+bed in the other room; resolutely not 'worrying,' but gnawed by
+jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just
+visited by pity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+OUTLANDISH NIGHT
+
+Soames doggedly let the spring come--no easy task for one conscious
+that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no
+issue from the web anywhere visible.  Mr. Polteed reported nothing,
+except that his watch went on--costing a lot of money.  Val and his
+cousin were gone to the war, whence came news more favourable;
+Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had retained his health;
+business prospered almost terribly--there was nothing to worry
+Soames except that he was 'held up,' could make no step in any
+direction.
+
+He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them
+think that he had 'piped off,' as James would have put it--he might
+want to 'pipe on' again at any minute.  But he had to be so
+restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the
+Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the
+purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of having
+been possessively irregular.
+
+He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most
+amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,
+jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses
+and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage
+of idiocy, as it seemed to him.  Mafeking!  Of course, it had been
+relieved!  Good!  But was that an excuse?  Who were these people,
+what were they, where had they come from into the West End?  His
+face was tickled, his ears whistled into.  Girls cried: 'Keep your
+hair on, stucco!'  A youth so knocked off his top-hat that he
+recovered it with difficulty.  Crackers were exploding beneath his
+nose, between his feet.  He was bewildered, exasperated, offended.
+This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse had
+unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters of whose existence he had
+heard, perhaps, but believed in never.  This, then, was the
+populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and
+Forsyteism.  This was--egad!--Democracy!  It stank, yelled, was
+hideous!  In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps--but here in
+Regent Street, in Piccadilly!  What were, the police about!  In
+1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the
+cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly
+believe his scorching eyes.  The whole thing was unspeakable!
+These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny; such
+swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing--and what laughter!
+
+Nothing sacred to them!  He shouldn't be surprised if they began to
+break windows.  In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter
+which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing
+dervish of a crowd was swarming.  From the Club windows his own
+kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.  They
+didn't realise!  Why, this was serious--might come to anything!
+The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in different
+mood!  He remembered there had been a mob in the late eighties,
+when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and made speeches.
+But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise.  They were hysterical
+--it wasn't English!  And all about the relief of a little town as
+big as--Watford, six thousand miles away.  Restraint, reserve!
+Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those
+indispensable attributes of property and culture, where were they?
+It wasn't English!  No, it wasn't English!  So Soames brooded,
+threading his way on.  It was as if he had suddenly caught sight of
+someone cutting the covenant 'for quiet possession' out of his
+legal documents; or of a monster lurking and stalking out in the
+future, casting its shadow before.  Their want of stolidity, their
+want of reverence!  It was like discovering that nine-tenths of the
+people of England were foreigners.  And if that were so--then,
+anything might happen!
+
+At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt from
+racing, holding a false nose in his hand.
+
+"Hallo, Soames!" he said, "have a nose!"
+
+Soames responded with a pale smile.
+
+"Got this from one of these sportsmen," went on George, who had
+evidently been dining; "had to lay him out--for trying to bash my
+hat.  I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,
+they're getting so damned cheeky--all radicals and socialists.
+They want our goods.  You tell Uncle James that, it'll make him
+sleep."
+
+'In vino veritas,' thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed
+on up Hamilton Place.  There was but a trickle of roysterers in
+Park Lane, not very noisy.  And looking up at the houses he
+thought: 'After all, we're the backbone of the country.  They won't
+upset us easily.  Possession's nine points of the law.'
+
+But, as he closed the door of his father's house behind him, all
+that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his
+mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had awakened
+in the warm clean morning comfort of his spring-mattressed bed.
+
+Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood
+still.
+
+A wife!  Somebody to talk things over with.  One had a right!  Damn
+it!  One had a right!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOAMES IN PARIS
+
+
+Soames had travelled little.  Aged nineteen he had made the 'petty
+tour' with his father, mother, and Winifred--Brussels, the Rhine,
+Switzerland, and home by way of Paris.  Aged twenty-seven, just
+when he began to take interest in pictures, he had spent five hot
+weeks in Italy, looking into the Renaissance not so much in it as
+he had been led to expect--and a fortnight in Paris on his way
+back, looking into himself, as became a Forsyte surrounded by
+people so strongly self-centred and 'foreign' as the French.  His
+knowledge of their language being derived from his public school,
+he did not understand them when they spoke.  Silence he had found
+better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself.  He had
+disliked the look of the men's clothes, the closed-in cabs, the
+theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which smelled
+of beeswax.  He was too cautious and too shy to explore that side
+of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its attraction under
+the rose; and as for a collector's bargain--not one to be had!  As
+Nicholas might have put it--they were a grasping lot.  He had come
+back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.
+
+When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his
+third attempt on the centre of civilisation.  This time, however,
+the mountain was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply
+civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really was.  Moreover, he had
+a definite objective.  This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of
+taste and immorality, but the prosecution of his own legitimate
+affairs.  He went, indeed, because things were getting past a joke.
+The watch went on and on, and--nothing--nothing!  Jolyon had never
+returned to Paris, and no one else was 'suspect!'  Busy with new
+and very confidential matters, Soames was realising more than ever
+how essential reputation is to a solicitor.  But at night and in
+his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time was
+always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as much 'in
+irons' as ever.  Since Mafeking night he had become aware that a
+'young fool of a doctor' was hanging round Annette.  Twice he had
+come across him--a cheerful young fool, not more than thirty.
+
+Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness--an indecent,
+extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts.  The
+mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture;
+and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she
+was being shadowed: It was this which finally decided him to go and
+see for himself; to go and once more try to break down her
+repugnance, her refusal to make her own and his path comparatively
+smooth once more.  If he failed again--well, he would see what she
+did with herself, anyway!
+
+He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to
+Forsytes, where practically nobody spoke French.  He had formed no
+plan.  He did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she
+had no chance to evade him by flight.  And next morning he set out
+in bright weather.
+
+Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which
+almost annoyed Soames.  He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a
+little sideways in real curiosity.  He desired now to understand
+things French.  Was not Annette French?  There was much to be got
+out of his visit, if he could only get it.  In this laudable mood
+and the Place de la Concorde he was nearly run down three times.
+He came on the 'Cours la Reine,' where Irene's hotel was situated,
+almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed on his procedure.
+Crossing over to the river side, he noted the building, white and
+cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen through a screen of
+plane-tree leaves.  And, conscious that it would be far better to
+meet her casually in some open place than to risk a call, he sat
+down on a bench whence he could watch the entrance.  It was not
+quite eleven o'clock, and improbable that she had yet gone out.
+Some pigeons were strutting and preening their feathers in the
+pools of sunlight between the shadows of the plane-trees.  A
+workman in a blue blouse passed, and threw them crumbs from the
+paper which contained his dinner.  A 'bonne' coiffed with ribbon
+shepherded two little girls with pig-tails and frilled drawers.  A
+cab meandered by, whose cocher wore a blue coat and a black-glazed
+hat.  To Soames a kind of affectation seemed to cling about it all,
+a sort of picturesqueness which was out of date.  A theatrical
+people, the French!  He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a
+sense of injury that Fate should be casting his life into out-
+landish waters.  He shouldn't wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this
+foreign life; she had never been properly English--even to look at!
+And he began considering which of those windows could be hers under
+the green sunblinds.  How could he word what he had come to say so
+that it might pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy?  He threw
+the fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: ' I
+can't stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs.  Better give it up
+and call on her in the late afternoon.'  But he still sat on, heard
+twelve strike, and then half-past.  'I'll wait till one,' he
+thought, 'while I'm about it.'  But just then he started up, and
+shrinkingly sat down again.  A woman had come out in a cream-
+coloured frock, and was moving away under a fawn-coloured parasol.
+Irene herself!  He waited till she was too far away to recognise
+him, then set out after her.  She was strolling as though she had
+no particular objective; moving, if he remembered rightly, toward
+the Bois de Boulogne.  For half an hour at least he kept his
+distance on the far side of the way till she had passed into the
+Bois itself.  Was she going to meet someone after all?  Some
+confounded Frenchman--one of those 'Bel Ami' chaps, perhaps, who
+had nothing to do but hang about women--for he had read that book
+with difficulty and a sort of disgusted fascination.  He followed
+doggedly along a shady alley, losing sight of her now and then when
+the path curved.  And it came back to him how, long ago, one night
+in Hyde Park he had slid and sneaked from tree to tree, from seat
+to seat, hunting blindly, ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her
+and young Bosinney.  The path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came
+on her sitting in front of a small fountain--a little green-bronze
+Niobe veiled in hair to her slender hips, gazing at the pool she
+had wept: He came on her so suddenly that he was past before he
+could turn and take off his hat.  She did not start up.  She had
+always had great self-command--it was one of the things he most
+admired in her, one of his greatest grievances against her, because
+he had never been able to tell what she was thinking.  Had she
+realised that he was following?  Her self-possession made him
+angry; and, disdaining to explain his presence, he pointed to the
+mournful little Niobe, and said:
+
+"That's rather a good thing."
+
+He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her
+composure.
+
+"I didn't want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A little lonely."  As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to
+look at the fountain and passed on.
+
+Irene's eyes followed her.
+
+"No," she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, "never
+lonely.  One has always one's shadow."
+
+Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, it's your own fault.  You can be free of it at any moment.
+Irene, come back to me, and be free."
+
+Irene laughed.
+
+"Don't!" cried Soames, stamping his foot; "it's inhuman.  Listen!
+Is there any condition I can make which will bring you back to me?
+If I promise you a separate house--and just a visit now and then?"
+
+Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.
+
+"None!  None!  None!  You may hunt me to the grave.  I will not
+come."
+
+Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.
+
+"Don't make a scene!" he said sharply.  And they both stood
+motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the
+sunlight was burnishing.
+
+"That's your last word, then," muttered Soames, clenching his
+hands; "you condemn us both."
+
+Irene bent her head.  "I can't come back.  Good-bye!"
+
+A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.
+
+"Stop!" he said, "and listen to me a moment.  You gave me a sacred
+vow--you came to me without a penny.  You had all I could give you.
+You broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you
+refused me a child; you've left me in prison; you--you still move
+me so that I want you--I want you.  Well, what do you think of
+yourself?"
+
+Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.
+
+"God made me as I am," she said; "wicked if you like--but not so
+wicked that I'll give myself again to a man I hate."
+
+The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to
+lay a caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.
+
+Soames could neither speak nor move.  That word 'hate'--so extreme,
+so primitive--made all the Forsyte in him tremble.  With a deep
+imprecation he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran
+almost into the arms of the lady sauntering back--the fool, the
+shadowing fool!
+
+He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the Bois.
+
+'Well,' he thought, 'I need have no consideration for her now; she
+has not a grain of it for me.  I'll show her this very day that
+she's my wife still.'
+
+But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion
+that he did not know what he meant.  One could not make scenes in
+public, and short of scenes in public what was there he could do?
+He almost cursed his own thin-skinnedness.  She might deserve no
+consideration; but he--alas! deserved some at his own hands.  And
+sitting lunchless in the hall of his hotel, with tourists passing
+every moment, Baedeker in hand, he was visited by black dejection.
+In irons!  His whole life, with every natural instinct and every
+decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all because Fate had
+driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon this woman--so
+utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set on any other!
+Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for seeing in her
+anything but the cruel Venus she was!  And yet, still seeing her
+with the sunlight on the clinging China crepe of her gown, he
+uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was passing, thought:
+'Man in pain!  Let's see! what did I have for lunch?'
+
+Later, in front of a cafe near the Opera, over a glass of cold tea
+with lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious resolution to
+go and dine at her hotel.  If she were there, he would speak to
+her; if she were not, he would leave a note.  He dressed carefully,
+and wrote as follows:
+
+"Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all
+events.  If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone
+unturned to make things unbearable for him.  "S.  F."
+
+He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the
+maiden name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word
+Forsyte on the envelope lest she should tear it up unread.  Then he
+went out, and made his way through the glowing streets, abandoned
+to evening pleasure-seekers.  Entering her hotel, he took his seat
+in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could see all
+entrances and exits.  She was not there.  He ate little, quickly,
+watchfully.  She did not come.  He lingered in the lounge over his
+coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy.  But still she did not come.
+He went over to the keyboard and examined the names.  Number
+twelve, on the first floor!  And he determined to take the note up
+himself.  He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little salon;
+eight-ten-twelve!  Should he knock, push the note under, or....?
+He looked furtively round and turned the handle.  The door opened,
+but into a little space leading to another door; he knocked on
+that--no answer.  The door was locked.  It fitted very closely to
+the floor; the note would not go under.  He thrust it back into his
+pocket, and stood a moment listening.  He felt somehow certain that
+she was not there.  And suddenly he came away, passing the little
+salon down the stairs.  He stopped at the bureau and said:
+
+"Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?"
+
+"Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur--suddenly, about three o'clock.
+There was illness in her family."
+
+Soames compressed his lips.  "Oh!" he said; "do you know her
+address?"
+
+"Non, Monsieur.  England, I think."
+
+Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out.  He hailed
+an open horse-cab which was passing.
+
+"Drive me anywhere!"
+
+The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved his
+whip.  And Soames was borne along in that little yellow-wheeled
+Victoria all over star-shaped Paris, with here and there a pause,
+and the question, "C'est par ici, Monsieur?" "No, go on," till the
+man gave it up in despair, and the yellow-wheeled chariot continued
+to roll between the tall, flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-
+tree avenues--a little Flying Dutchman of a cab.
+
+'Like my life,' thought Soames, 'without object, on and on!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN THE WEB
+
+
+Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third
+morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and
+carried a brown billycock hat.  Soames motioned him to a seat.
+
+"The news from the war is not so bad, is it?" said Mr. Polteed.  "I
+hope I see you well, sir."
+
+"Thanks! quite."
+
+Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into
+it, and said softly:
+
+"I think we've done your business for you at last."
+
+"What?" ejaculated Soames.
+
+"Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be justified
+in calling conclusive evidence," and Mr. Polteed paused.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17 and
+a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him coming
+out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o'clock in the evening.
+With a little care in the giving of the evidence that will be
+enough, especially as 17 has left Paris--no doubt with the party in
+question.  In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven't got on to
+them again, yet; but we shall--we shall.  She's worked hard under
+very difficult circumstances, and I'm glad she's brought it off at
+last."  Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped its end against
+the table, looked at Soames, and put it back.  The expression on
+his client's face was not encouraging.
+
+"Who is this new person?" said Soames abruptly.
+
+"That we don't know.  She'll swear to the fact, and she's got his
+appearance pat."
+
+Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:
+
+"'Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening
+dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat cheeks,
+good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....'"
+
+Soames rose and went to the window.  He stood there in sardonic
+fury.  Congenital idiot--spidery congenital idiot!  Seven months at
+fifteen pounds a week--to be tracked down as his own wife's lover!
+Guilty look!  He threw the window open.
+
+"It's hot," he said, and came back to his seat:
+
+Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.
+
+"I doubt if that's quite good enough," he said, drawling the words,
+"with no name or address.  I think you may let that lady have a
+rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end."  Whether Polteed had
+spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental vision of him in
+the midst of his cronies dissolved in inextinguishable laughter.
+'Guilty look!'  Damnation!
+
+Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: "I assure
+you we have put it through sometimes on less than that.  It's
+Paris, you know.  Attractive woman living alone.  Why not risk it,
+sir?  We might screw it up a peg."
+
+Soames had sudden insight.  The fellow's professional zeal was
+stirred: 'Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce
+through a visit to his own wife's bedroom!  Something to talk of
+there, when I retire!'  And for one wild moment he thought: 'Why
+not?'  After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet
+and a guilty look!
+
+"I'm not authorised to take any risk!" he said shortly.
+
+Mr. Polteed looked up.
+
+"Pity," he said, "quite a pity!  That other affair seemed very
+costive."
+
+Soames rose.
+
+"Never mind that.  Please watch 47, and take care not to find a
+mare's nest.  Good-morning!"
+
+Mr. Polteed's eye glinted at the words 'mare's nest!'
+
+"Very good.  You shall be kept informed."
+
+And Soames was alone again.  The spidery, dirty, ridiculous
+business!  Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on
+them.  Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk
+roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares, very
+desirable, in Manifold and Topping's.  That afternoon he left work
+early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne.  Only Madame
+Lamotte was in.  Would Monsieur have tea with her?
+
+Soames bowed.
+
+When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little
+room, he said abruptly
+
+"I want a talk with you, Madame."
+
+The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long
+expected such words.
+
+"I have to ask you something first: That young doctor--what's his
+name?  Is there anything between him and Annette?"
+
+Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet--clear-cut,
+black, hard, shining.
+
+"Annette is young," she said; "so is monsieur le docteur.  Between
+young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good daughter.
+Ah! what a jewel of a nature!"
+
+The least little smile twisted Soames' lips.
+
+"Nothing definite, then?"
+
+"But definite--no, indeed!  The young man is veree nice, but--what
+would you?  There is no money at present."
+
+She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same.
+Their eyes met.
+
+"I am a married man," he said, "living apart from my wife for many
+years.  I am seeking to divorce her."
+
+Madame Lamotte put down her cup.  Indeed!  What tragic things there
+were!  The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer
+species of contempt in Soames.
+
+"I am a rich man," he added, fully conscious that the remark was
+not in good taste.  "It is useless to say more at present, but I
+think you understand."
+
+Madame's eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked at
+him very straight.
+
+"Ah! ca--mais nous avons le temps!" was all she said.  "Another
+little cup?" Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked
+westward.
+
+He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit
+herself with that cheerful young ass until....!  But what chance of
+his ever being able to say: 'I'm free.'  What chance?  The future
+had lost all semblance of reality.  He felt like a fly, entangled
+in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air with
+pitiful eyes.
+
+He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens,
+and down Queen's Gate towards Chelsea.  Perhaps she had gone back
+to her flat.  That at all events he could find out.  For since that
+last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had
+taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover.  He
+arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour.  No need to
+enquire!  A grey-haired lady was watering the flower-boxes in her
+window.  It was evidently let.  And he walked slowly past again,
+along the river--an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony and
+comfort, except within his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+RICHMOND PARK
+
+
+On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was
+received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:
+
+"Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again."
+
+It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure
+of June, whose berth was booked for the following day.  She was,
+indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to her
+father's care when the message arrived.
+
+The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus of
+Jolly's enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation
+and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails their
+individual liberties.  Enthusiastic at first about the
+'wonderfulness' of the work, she had begun after a month to feel
+that she could train herself so much better than others could train
+her.  And if Holly had not insisted on following her example, and
+being trained too, she must inevitably have 'cried off.'  The
+departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April had further
+stiffened her failing resolve.  But now, on the point of departure,
+the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two children,
+adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed on her
+so that she was still in danger of backing out.  The reading of
+that cablegram, with its disquieting reality, clinched the matter.
+She saw herself already nursing Jolly--for of course they would let
+her nurse her own brother!  Jolyon--ever wide and doubtful--had no
+such hope.  Poor June!
+
+Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal life
+was?  Ever since he knew of his boy's arrival at Cape Town the
+thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon.  He
+could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger
+all the time.  The cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a
+relief.  He was now safe from bullets, anyway.  And yet--this
+enteric was a virulent disease!  The Times was full of deaths
+therefrom.  Why could he not be lying out there in that up-country
+hospital, and his boy safe at home?  The un-Forsytean selfsacrifice
+of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered Jolyon.  He
+would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his boy;
+but no such personal motive was influencing them.  He could only
+think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.
+
+Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree.
+She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital
+training away from home.  And, seeing her approach, he thought:
+'She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom.
+Thank God she isn't going out.'  She had seated herself in the
+swing, very silent and still.  'She feels this,' thought Jolyon,
+'as much as I' and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: "Don't
+take it to heart too much, my child.  If he weren't ill, he might
+be in much greater danger."
+
+Holly got out of the swing.
+
+"I want to tell you something, Dad.  It was through me that Jolly
+enlisted and went out."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love.  We
+used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged.  Jolly found it out,
+and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.  It was
+all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too.  Because if anything
+happens to either of them I should feel awful.  Besides, I'm just
+as much trained as June."
+
+Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony.
+So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself;
+and his three children were Forsytes after all.  Surely Holly might
+have told him all this before!  But he smothered the sarcastic
+sayings on his lips.  Tenderness to the young was perhaps the most
+sacred article of his belief.  He had got, no doubt, what he
+deserved.  Engaged!  So this was why he had so lost touch with her!
+And to young Val Dartie--nephew of Soames--in the other camp!  It
+was all terribly distasteful.  He closed his easel, and set his
+drawing against the tree.
+
+"Have you told June?"
+
+"Yes; she says she'll get me into her cabin somehow.  It's a single
+cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor.  If you consent,
+she'll go up now and get permission."
+
+'Consent?' thought Jolyon.  'Rather late in the day to ask for
+that!'  But again he checked himself.
+
+"You're too young, my dear; they won't let you."
+
+"June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town.  If
+they won't let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on
+training there.  Let me go, Dad!"
+
+Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.
+
+"I never stop anyone from doing anything," he said.
+
+Holly flung her arms round his neck.
+
+"Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world."
+
+'That means the worst,' thought Jolyon.  If he had ever doubted his
+creed of tolerance he did so then.
+
+"I'm not friendly with Val's family," he said, "and I don't know
+Val, but Jolly didn't like him."
+
+Holly looked at the distance and said:
+
+"I love him."
+
+"That settles it," said Jolyon dryly, then catching the expression
+on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: 'Is anything more
+pathetic than the faith of the young?' Unless he actually forbade
+her going it was obvious that he must make the best of it, so he
+went up to town with June.  Whether due to her persistence, or the
+fact that the official they saw was an old school friend of
+Jolyon's, they obtained permission for Holly to share the single
+cabin.  He took them to Surbiton station the following evening, and
+they duly slid away from him, provided with money, invalid foods,
+and those letters of credit without which Forsytes do not travel.
+
+He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late
+dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him
+that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show
+them that he appreciated their sympathy.  But it was a real relief
+to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones--cunningly chosen
+by young Bosinney for shape and colour--with night closing in
+around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the trees,
+and smelling so sweet that it made him ache.  The grass was
+drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down,
+till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three,
+not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
+father was always nearest to the house, and his son always nearest
+to the terrace edge.  Each had an arm lightly within his arm; he
+dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should disturb them,
+and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it dropped from his
+lips, at last, which were getting hot.  They left him then, and his
+arms felt chilly.  Three Jolyons in one Jolyon they had walked.
+
+He stood still, counting the sounds--a carriage passing on the
+highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage's farm, the whispering
+trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle.  A multitude of
+stars up there--bright and silent, so far off!  No moon as yet!
+Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the iris
+flowers along the terrace edge--his favourite flower that had the
+night's own colour on its curving crumpled petals.  He turned round
+to the house.  Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to live in
+all that part of it.  Stark loneliness!  He could not go on living
+here alone.  And yet, so long as there was beauty, why should a man
+feel lonely?  The answer--as to some idiot's riddle--was: Because
+he did.  The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for at
+the back of beauty was harmony, and at the back of harmony was--
+union.  Beauty could not comfort if the soul were out of it.  The
+night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of grapes on it in starshine,
+and the breath of grass and honey coming from it, he could not
+enjoy, while she who was to him the life of beauty, its embodiment
+and essence, was cut off from him, utterly cut off now, he felt, by
+honourable decency.
+
+He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that
+resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their
+own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers.  But after
+dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.
+
+He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains--high as the
+very stars--stretching in a semi--circle from footlights to
+footlights.  He himself was very small, a little black restless
+figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not
+altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only
+experiencing but watching.  This figure of himself and Soames was
+trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and
+dark, kept him in.  Several times he had crossed in front of them
+before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift--a tall chink of
+beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise,
+remote, ineffable.  Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he
+found the curtains closing before him.  Bitterly disappointed he--
+or was it Soames?--moved on, and there was the chink again through
+the parted curtains, which again closed too soon.  This went on and
+on and he never got through till he woke with the word "Irene" on
+his lips.  The dream disturbed him badly, especially that
+identification of himself with Soames.
+
+Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours riding
+Jolly's horse in search of fatigue.  And on the second day he made
+up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get
+permission to follow his daughters to South Africa.  He had just
+begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:
+
+
+"GREEN HOTEL,
+"June 13.
+" RICHMOND.
+
+"MY DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"You will be surprised to see how near I am to you.  Paris became
+impossible--and I have come here to be within reach of your advice.
+I would so love to see you again.  Since you left Paris I don't
+think I have met anyone I could really talk to.  Is all well with
+you and with your boy?  No one knows, I think, that I am here at
+present.
+
+"Always your friend,
+
+"IRENE."
+
+
+Irene within three miles of him!--and again in flight!  He stood
+with a very queer smile on his lips.  This was more than he had
+bargained for!
+
+About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he went
+along, he thought: 'Richmond Park!  By Jove, it suits us Forsytes!'
+Not that Forsytes lived there--nobody lived there save royalty,
+rangers, and the deer--but in Richmond Park Nature was allowed to
+go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of being natural,
+seeming to say: 'Look at my instincts--they are almost passions,
+very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of course; the very hub of
+possession is to possess oneself.'  Yes! Richmond Park possessed
+itself, even on that bright day of June, with arrowy cuckoos
+shifting the tree-points of their calls, and the wood doves
+announcing high summer.
+
+The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o'clock, stood nearly
+opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was
+modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry
+tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost
+always standing before the door.
+
+In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion,
+Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work,
+playing 'Hansel and Gretel' out of an old score.  Above her on a
+wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony,
+amongst deer-hounds, Scotch. caps, and slain stags; beside her in a
+pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia.  The
+Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock
+Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the
+past century.
+
+"If the proprietor had eyes," he said, "he would show you the door;
+you have broken through his decorations."  Thus lightly he
+smothered up an emotional moment.  Having eaten cold beef, pickled
+walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they
+walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence
+Jolyon had dreaded.
+
+"You haven't told me about Paris," he said at last.
+
+"No.  I've been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that.
+But then Soames came.  By the little Niobe--the same story; would I
+go back to him?"
+
+"Incredible!"
+
+She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now.
+Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: 'I
+have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.'
+
+For sheer emotional intensity had he ever--old as he was--passed
+through such a moment?
+
+The words: 'Irene, I adore you!' almost escaped him.  Then, with a
+clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision
+capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white
+wall.
+
+"My boy is very ill out there," he said quietly.
+
+Irene slipped her arm through his.
+
+"Let's walk on; I understand."
+
+No miserable explanation to attempt!  She had understood!  And they
+walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the
+rabbitholes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly.  He left her two
+hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.
+
+'She knows of my feeling for her, then,' he thought.  Of course!
+One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OVER THE RIVER
+
+
+Jolly was tired to death of dreams.  They had left him now too wan
+and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly
+remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze
+through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running by
+in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond.  He
+knew what the Karoo was now, even if he had not seen a Boer roll
+over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of flying bullets.  This
+pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled powder.  A
+thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit--who knew?
+Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil thing its
+victory--just enough to know that there were many lying here with
+him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch
+that thread of river and be able to remember faintly those far-away
+things....
+
+The sun was nearly down.  It would be cooler soon.  He would have
+liked to know the time--to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth, to
+hear the repeater strike.  It would have been friendly, home-like.
+He had not even strength to remember that the old watch was last
+wound the day he began to lie here.  The pulse of his brain beat so
+feebly that faces which came and went, nurse's, doctor's,
+orderly's, were indistinguishable, just one indifferent face; and
+the words spoken about him meant all the same thing, and that
+almost nothing.  Those things he used to do, though far and faint,
+were more distinct--walking past the foot of the old steps at
+Harrow 'bill'--'Here, sir!  Here, sir!'--wrapping boots in the
+Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining boots--grandfather
+coming from somewhere dark--a smell of earth--the mushroom house!
+Robin Hill!  Burying poor old Balthasar in the leaves!  Dad!
+Home....
+
+Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no water
+in it--someone was speaking too.  Want anything?  No.  What could
+one want?  Too weak to want--only to hear his watch strike....
+
+Holly!  She wouldn't bowl properly.  Oh!  Pitch them up!  Not
+sneaks!...  'Back her, Two and Bow!'  He was Two!...  Consciousness
+came once more with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a
+rising blood-red crescent moon.  His eyes rested on it fascinated;
+in the long minutes of brain-nothingness it went moving up and
+up....
+
+"He's going, doctor!"   Not pack boots again?  Never?  'Mind your
+form, Two!'  Don't cry!  Go quietly-over the river--sleep!...
+Dark?  If somebody would--strike--his--watch!...
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOAMES ACTS
+
+
+A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained unopened
+in Soames' pocket throughout two hours of sustained attention to
+the affairs of the 'New Colliery Company,' which, declining almost
+from the moment of old Jolyon's retirement from the Chairmanship,
+had lately run down so fast that there was now nothing for it but a
+'winding-up.'  He took the letter out to lunch at his City Club,
+sacred to him for the meals he had eaten there with his father in
+the early seventies, when James used to like him to come and see
+far himself the nature of his future life.
+
+Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed
+potato, he read:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+"In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the matter
+up at the other end with gratifying results.  Observation of 47 has
+enabled us to locate 17 at the Green Hotel, Richmond.  The two have
+been observed to meet daily during the past week in Richmond Park.
+Nothing absolutely crucial has so far been notified.  But in
+conjunction with what we had from Paris at the beginning of the
+year, I am confident we could now satisfy the Court.  We shall, of
+course, continue to watch the matter until we hear from you.
+
+"Very faithfully yours,
+
+"CLAUD POLTEED.'
+
+
+Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:
+
+"Take this away; it's cold."
+
+"Shall I bring you some more, sir?"
+
+"No.  Get me some coffee in the other room."
+
+And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two
+acquaintances without sign of recognition.
+
+'Satisfy the Court!' he thought, sitting at a little round marble
+table with the coffee before him.  That fellow Jolyon!  He poured
+out his coffee, sweetened and drank it.  He would disgrace him in
+the eyes of his own children!  And rising, with that resolution hot
+within him, he found for the first time the inconvenience of being
+his own solicitor.  He could not treat this scandalous matter in
+his own office.  He must commit the soul of his private dignity to
+a stranger, some other professional dealer in family dishonour.
+Who was there he could go to?  Linkman and Laver in Budge Row,
+perhaps--reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding acquaintances.
+But before he saw them he must see Polteed again.  But at this
+thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness.  To part with his
+secret?  How find the words?  How subject himself to contempt and
+secret laughter?  Yet, after all, the fellow knew already--oh yes,
+he knew!  And, feeling that he must finish with it now, he took a
+cab into the West End.
+
+In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed's room was positively
+open, and the only precaution was a wire gauze, preventing the
+intrusion of flies.  Two or three had tried to come in, and been
+caught, so that they seemed to be clinging there with the intention
+of being devoured presently.  Mr. Polteed, following the direction
+of his client's eye, rose apologetically and closed the window.
+
+'Posing ass!'  thought Soames.  Like all who fundamentally believe
+in themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little
+sideway smile, he said: "I've had your letter.  I'm going to act.
+I suppose you know who the lady you've been watching really is?"
+Mr. Polteed's expression at that moment was a masterpiece.  It so
+clearly said: 'Well, what do you think?  But mere professional
+knowledge, I assure you--pray forgive it!'  He made a little half
+airy movement with his hand, as who should say: 'Such things--such
+things will happen to us all!'
+
+"Very well, then," said Soames, moistening his lips: "there's no
+need to say more.  I'm instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row
+to act for me.  I don't want to hear your evidence, but kindly make
+your report to them at five o'clock, and continue to observe the
+utmost secrecy."
+
+Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once.  "My
+dear sir," he said.
+
+"Are you convinced," asked Soames with sudden energy, "that there
+is enough?"
+
+The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed's shoulders.
+
+"You can risk it," he murmured; "with what we have, and human
+nature, you can risk it."
+
+Soames rose.  "You will ask for Mr. Linkman.  Thanks; don't get
+up."  He could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him
+and the door.  In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his forehead.
+This had been the worst of it--he could stand the strangers better.
+And he went back into the City to do what still lay before him.
+
+That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was
+overwhelmed by his old longing for a son--a son, to watch him eat
+as he went down the years, to be taken on his knee as James on a
+time had been wont to take him; a son of his own begetting, who
+could understand him because he was the same flesh and blood--
+understand, and comfort him, and become more rich and cultured than
+himself because he would start even better off.  To get old--like
+that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there--and be quite alone
+with possessions heaping up around him; to take no interest in
+anything because it had no future and must pass away from him to
+hands and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot!  No!  He would
+force it through now, and  be free to marry, and have a son to care
+for him before he grew to be like the old old man his father,
+wistfully watching now his sweetbread, now his son.
+
+In that mood he went up to bed.  But, lying warm between those fine
+linen sheets of Emily's providing, he was visited by memories and
+torture.  Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling of her body,
+beset him.  Why had he ever been fool enough to see her again, and
+let this flood back on him so that it was pain to think of her with
+that fellow--that stealing fellow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A SUMMER DAY
+
+
+His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon's mind in the days which
+followed the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park.  No further
+news had come; enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor
+could he expect to hear from June and Holly for three weeks at
+least.  In these days he felt how insufficient were his memories of
+Jolly, and what an amateur of a father he had been.  There was not
+a single memory in which anger played a part; not one
+reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one
+heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly's mother died.
+Nothing but half-ironical affection.  He had been too afraid of
+committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his
+liberty, or interfering with that of his boy.
+
+Only in Irene's presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
+ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his
+son.  With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and
+social creed of which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again
+during his boy's public school and varsity life--all that sense of
+not going back on what father and son expected of each other.  With
+Irene was bound up all his delight in beauty and in Nature.  And he
+seemed to know less and less which was the stronger within him.
+>From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely awakened, however,
+one afternoon, just as he was starting off to Richmond, by a young
+man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who came forward
+faintly smiling.
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte?  Thank you!"   Placing an envelope in Jolyon's
+hand he wheeled off the path and rode away.  Bewildered, Jolyon
+opened it.
+
+"Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte!"
+
+A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant
+reaction 'Why, here's the very thing you want, and you don't like
+it!'  But she must have had one too; and he must go to her at once.
+He turned things over as he went along.  It was an ironical busi-
+ness.  For, whatever the Scriptures said about the heart, it took
+more than mere longings to satisfy the law.  They could perfectly
+well defend this suit, or at least in good faith try to.  But the
+idea of doing so revolted Jolyon.  If not her lover in deed he was
+in desire, and he knew that she was ready to come to him.  Her face
+had told him so.  Not that he exaggerated her feeling for him.  She
+had had her grand passion, and he could not expect another from her
+at his age.  But she had trust in him, affection for him, and must
+feel that he would be a refuge.  Surely she would not ask him to
+defend the suit, knowing that he adored her!  Thank Heaven she had
+not that maddening British conscientiousness which refused
+happiness for the sake of refusing!  She must rejoice at this
+chance of being free after seventeen years of death in life!  As to
+publicity, the fat was in the fire!  To defend the suit would not
+take away the slur.  Jolyon had all the proper feeling of a Forsyte
+whose privacy is threatened: If he was to be  hung by the Law, by
+all means let it be for a sheep!  Moreover the notion of standing
+in a witness box and swearing to the truth that no gesture, not
+even a word of love had passed between them seemed to him more
+degrading than to take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer--more
+truly degrading, considering the feeling in his heart, and just as
+bad and painful for his children.  The thought of explaining away,
+if he could, before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their
+meetings in Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him.
+The brutality and hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process;
+the probability that they would not be believed--the mere vision of
+her, whom he looked on as the embodiment of Nature and of Beauty,
+standing there before all those suspicious, gloating eyes was
+hideous to him.  No, no!  To defend a suit only made a London
+holiday, and sold the newspapers.  A thousand times better accept
+what Soames and the gods had sent!
+
+'Besides,' he thought honestly, 'who knows whether, even for my
+boy's sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer?
+Anyway, her neck will be out of chancery at last!'  Thus absorbed,
+he was hardly conscious of the heavy heat.  The sky had become
+overcast, purplish with little streaks of white.  A heavy heat-drop
+plashed a little star pattern in the dust of the road as he entered
+the Park.  'Phew!'  he thought, 'thunder!  I hope she's not come to
+meet me; there's a ducking up there!'  But at that very minute he
+saw Irene coming towards the Gate.  ' We must scuttle back to Robin
+Hill,' he thought.
+
+The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o'clock, bringing
+welcome distraction to the clerks in every office.  Soames was
+drinking a cup of tea when a note was brought in to him:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+Forsyte v.  Forsyte and Forsyte
+
+"In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you that we
+personally served the respondent and co-respondent in this suit
+to-day, at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.
+"Faithfully yours,
+
+"LINKMAN AND LAVER."
+
+
+For some minutes Soames stared at that note.  Ever since he had
+given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them.  It was
+so scandalous, such a general disgrace!  The evidence, too, what he
+had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive; somehow, he
+believed less and less that those two had gone all lengths.  But
+this, of course, would drive them to it; and he suffered from the
+thought.  That fellow to have her love, where he had failed!  Was
+it too late?  Now that they had been brought up sharp by service of
+this petition, had he not a lever with which he could force them
+apart?  'But if I don't act at once,' he thought, 'it will be too
+late, now they've had this thing.  I'll go and see him; I'll go
+down!'
+
+And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the
+'new-fangled' motor-cabs.  It might take a long time to run that
+fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come
+to after such a shock!  'If I were a theatrical ass,' he thought,
+'I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or
+something!'  He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of
+'Magentie versus Wake,' intending to read them on the way down.  He
+did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and jarred,
+unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or the smell
+of petrol.  He must be guided by the fellow's attitude; the great
+thing was to keep his head!
+
+London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared
+Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards.  What a lot
+of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in
+the great scramble!  Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames
+thought: 'I could let go if I liked!  Nothing could touch me; I
+could snap my fingers, live as I wished--enjoy myself!'  No!  One
+could not live as he had and just drop it all--settle down in
+Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made.  A man's life
+was what he possessed and sought to possess.  Only fools thought
+otherwise--fools, and socialists, and libertines!
+
+The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace.  'Fifteen miles
+an hour, I should think!' he mused; 'this'll take people out of
+town to live!' and he thought of its bearing on the portions of
+London owned by his father--he himself had never taken to that form
+of investment, the gambler in him having all the outlet needed in
+his pictures.  And the cab sped on, down the hill past Wimbledon
+Common.  This interview!  Surely a man of fifty-two with grown-up
+children, and hung on the line, would not be reckless.  'He won't
+want to disgrace the family,' he thought; 'he was as fond of his
+father as I am of mine, and they were brothers.  That woman brings
+destruction--what is it in her?  I've never known.'  The cab
+branched off, along the side of a wood, and he heard a late cuckoo
+calling, almost the first he had heard that year.  He was now
+almost opposite the site he had originally chosen for his house,
+and which had been so unceremoniously rejected by Bosinney in
+favour of his own choice.  He began passing his handkerchief over
+his face and hands, taking deep breaths to give him steadiness.
+'Keep one's head,' he thought, 'keep one's head!'
+
+The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and
+the sound of music met him.  He had forgotten the fellow's
+daughters.
+
+"I may be out again directly," he said to the driver, "or I may be
+kept some time"; and he rang the bell.
+
+Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he
+felt relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by
+June or Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with
+complete surprise he saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting in
+an armchair listening.  They both stood up.  Blood surged into
+Soames' brain, and all his resolution to be guided by this or that
+left him utterly.  The look of 'his farmer forbears--dogged
+Forsytes down by the sea, from 'Superior Dosset' back-grinned out
+of his face.
+
+"Very pretty!"   he said.
+
+He heard the fellow murmur:
+
+"This is hardly the place--we'll go to the study, if you don't
+mind."  And they both passed him through the curtain opening.  In
+the little room to which he followed them, Irene stood by the open
+window, and the 'fellow' close to her by a big chair.  Soames
+pulled the door to behind him with a slam; the sound carried him
+back all those years to the day when he had shut out Jolyon--shut
+him out for meddling with his affairs.
+
+"Well," he said, "what have you to say for yourselves?"
+
+The fellow had the effrontery to smile.
+
+"What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask.  I
+should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."
+
+"Oh!" said Soames; "you think so!  I came to tell you that I'll
+divorce her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both, unless
+you swear to keep clear of each other from now on."
+
+He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering
+and his hands twitching.  Neither of them answered; but their faces
+seemed to him as if contemptuous.
+
+"Well," he said; "you--Irene?"
+
+Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.
+
+"Let her alone!" said Soames furiously.  "Irene, will you swear
+it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! and you?"
+
+"Still less."
+
+"So then you're guilty, are you?"
+
+"Yes, guilty."  It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with
+that unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried
+beyond himself, he cried:
+
+"You are a devil"
+
+"Go out!  Leave this house, or I'll do you an injury."
+
+That fellow to talk of injuries!  Did he know how near his throat
+was to being scragged?
+
+"A trustee," he said, "embezzling trust property!  A thief,
+stealing his cousin's wife."
+
+"Call me what you like.  You have chosen your part, we have chosen
+ours.  Go out!"
+
+If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that
+moment.
+
+"I'll make you pay!" he said.
+
+"I shall be very happy."
+
+At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of
+him who had nicknamed him 'the man of property,' Soames stood
+glaring.  It was ridiculous!
+
+There they were, kept from violence by some secret force.  No blow
+possible, no words to meet the case.  But he could not, did not
+know how to turn and go away.  His eyes fastened on Irene's face--
+the last time he would ever see that fatal face--the last time, no
+doubt!
+
+"You," he said suddenly, "I hope you'll treat him as you treated
+me--that's all."
+
+He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not quite
+relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the hall, and
+got into his cab.  He lolled against the cushion with his eyes
+shut.  Never in his life had he been so near to murderous violence,
+never so thrown away the restraint which was his second nature.  He
+had a stripped and naked feeling, as if all virtue had gone out of
+him--life meaningless, mind-striking work.  Sunlight streamed in on
+him, but he felt cold.  The scene he had passed through had gone
+from him already, what was before him would not materialise, he
+could catch on to nothing; and he felt frightened, as if he had
+been hanging over the edge of a precipice, as if with another turn
+of the screw sanity would have failed him.  'I'm not fit for it,'
+he thought; 'I mustn't--I'm not fit for it.'  The cab sped on, and
+in mechanical procession trees, houses, people passed, but had no
+significance.  'I feel very queer,' he thought; 'I'll take a
+Turkish bath. --I've been very near to something.  It won't do.'
+The cab whirred its way back over the bridge, up the Fulham Road,
+along the Park.
+
+"To the Hammam," said Soames.
+
+Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so comforting!
+Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte coming out, red
+and glistening.
+
+"Hallo!" said George; "what are you training for?  You've not got
+much superfluous."
+
+Buffoon!  Soames passed him with his sideway smile.  Lying back,
+rubbing his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he
+thought: 'Let them laugh!  I won't feel anything!  I can't stand
+violence!  It's not good for me!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SUMMER NIGHT
+
+
+Soames left dead silence in the little study.  "Thank you for that
+good lie," said Jolyon suddenly.  "Come out--the air in here is not
+what it was!"
+
+In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained
+peach-trees the two walked up and down in silence.  Old Jolyon had
+planted some cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy
+terrace and the dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed
+daisies; for twelve years they had flourished, till their dark
+spiral shapes had quite a look of Italy.  Birds fluttered softly in
+the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped past, with a steel-blue
+sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass felt springy beneath
+the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased each other.
+After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was wonderfully
+poignant.  Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow strip of
+garden-bed full of mignonette and pansies, and from the bees came a
+low hum in which all other sounds were set--the mooing of a cow
+deprived of her calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an elm-tree at
+the bottom of the meadow.  Who would have thought that behind them,
+within ten miles, London began--that London of the Forsytes, with
+its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its jumbled stone isles
+of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and stucco?  That London
+which had seen Irene's early tragedy, and Jolyon's own hard days;
+that web; that princely workhouse of the possessive instinct!
+
+And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll
+treat him as you treated me.'  That would depend on himself.  Could
+he trust himself?  Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave
+of what he adored?  Could beauty be confided to him?  Or should she
+not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments
+which passed, to return only at her own choosing?  'We are a breed
+of spoilers!' thought Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life
+is not safe with us.  Let her come to me as she will, when she
+will, not at all if she will not.  Let me be just her stand-by, her
+perching-place; never-never her cage!'
+
+She was the chink of beauty in his dream.  Was he to pass through
+the curtains now and reach her?  Was the rich stuff of many
+possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct
+walling in that little black figure of himself, and Soames--was it
+to be rent so that he could pass through into his vision, find
+there something not of the senses only?  'Let me,' he thought, 'ah!
+let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!'
+
+But at dinner there were plans to be made.  To-night she would go
+back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.  He
+must instruct his solicitor--Jack Herring.  Not a finger must be
+raised to hinder the process of the Law.  Damages exemplary,
+judicial strictures, costs, what they liked--let it go through at
+the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at
+last!  To-morrow he would see Herring--they would go and see him
+together.  And then--abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about
+evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth.  He looked
+round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a
+woman was sitting there.  The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
+mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli,
+had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women--
+this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair,
+her lips, and in her eyes.
+
+'And this is to be mine!'  he thought.  'It frightens me!'
+
+After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee.  They
+sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer
+night come very slowly on.  It was still warm and the air smelled
+of lime blossom--early this summer.  Two bats were flighting with
+the faint mysterious little noise they make.  He had placed the
+chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit
+the discreet light in there.  There was no wind, and not a whisper
+in the old oak-tree twenty yards away!  The moon rose from behind
+the copse, nearly full; and the two lights struggled, till
+moonlight conquered, changing the colour and quality of all the
+garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their feet,
+climbing up, changing their faces.
+
+"Well," said Jolyon at last, "you'll be tired, dear; we'd better
+start.  The maid will show you Holly's room," and he rang the study
+bell.  The maid who came handed him a telegram.  Watching her take
+Irene away, he thought: 'This must have come an hour or more ago,
+and she didn't bring it out to us!  That shows!  Well, we'll be
+hung for a sheep soon!'  And, opening the telegram, he read:
+
+
+"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on
+June 20th.  Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.
+
+
+He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless.  The moon shone in on
+him; a moth flew in his face.  The first day of all that he had not
+thought almost ceaselessly of Jolly.  He went blindly towards the
+window, struck against the old armchair--his father's--and sank
+down on to the arm of it.  He sat there huddled' forward, staring
+into the night.  Gone out like a candle flame; far from home, from
+love, all by himself, in the dark!  His boy!  From a little chap
+always so good to him--so friendly!  Twenty years old, and cut down
+like grass--to have no life at all!  'I didn't really know him,' he
+thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved each other.  It's
+only love that matters.'
+
+To die out there--lonely--wanting them--wanting home!  This seemed
+to his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself.
+No shelter, no protection, no love at the last!  And all the deeply
+rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential clinging
+to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon
+was so strong in all the Forsytes--felt outraged, cut, and torn by
+his boy's lonely passing.  Better far if he had died in battle,
+without time to long for them to come to him, to call out for them,
+perhaps, in his delirium!
+
+The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with
+uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him--the oak-tree his boy
+had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and
+hurt himself, and hadn't cried!
+
+The door creaked.  He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and
+read it.  He heard the faint rustle of her dress.  She sank on her
+knees close to him, and he forced himself to smile at her.  She
+stretched up her arms and drew his head down on her shoulder.  The
+perfume and warmth of her encircled him; her presence gained slowly
+his whole being.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JAMES IN WAITING
+
+
+Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his face
+toward Park Lane.  His father had been unwell lately.  This would
+have to be kept from him!  Never till that moment had he realised
+how much the dread of bringing James' grey hairs down with sorrow
+to the grave had counted with him; how intimately it was bound up
+with his own shrinking from scandal.  His affection for his father,
+always deep, had increased of late years with the knowledge that
+James looked on him as the real prop of his decline.  It seemed
+pitiful that one who had been so careful all his life and done so
+much for the family name--so that it was almost a byword for solid,
+wealthy respectability--should at his last gasp have to see it in
+all the newspapers.  This was like lending a hand to Death, that
+final enemy of Forsytes.  'I must tell mother,' he thought, 'and
+when it comes on, we must keep the papers from him somehow.  He
+sees hardly anyone.'  Letting himself in with his latchkey, he was
+beginning to ascend he stairs when he became conscious of commotion
+on the second-floor landing.  His mother's voice was saying:
+
+"Now, James, you'll catch cold.  Why can't you wait quietly?"
+
+His father's answering
+
+"Wait?  I'm always waiting.  Why doesn't he come in?"
+
+"You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy of
+yourself on the landing."
+
+"He'll go up to bed, I shouldn't wonder.  I shan't sleep."
+
+"Now come back to bed, James."
+
+"Um!  I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell."
+
+"You shan't have to wait till to-morrow morning; I'll go down and
+bring him up.  Don't fuss!"
+
+"There you go--always so cock-a-hoop.  He mayn't come in at all."
+
+"Well, if he doesn't come in you won't catch him by standing out
+here in your dressing-gown."
+
+Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father's tall
+figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over the
+balustrade above.  Light fell on his silvery hair and whiskers,
+investing his head with, a sort of halo.
+
+"Here he is!" he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured,
+and his mother's comfortable answer from the bedroom door:
+
+"That's all right.  Come in, and I'll brush your hair."  James
+extended a thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a
+skeleton, and passed through the doorway of his bedroom.
+
+'What is it?' thought Soames.  'What has he got hold of now?'
+
+His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the
+mirror, while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes through
+and through his hair.  She would do this several times a day, for
+it had on him something of the effect produced on a cat by
+scratching between its ears.
+
+"There you are!" he said.  "I've been waiting."
+
+Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
+examined the mark on it.
+
+"Well," he said, "you're looking better."
+
+James shook his head.
+
+"I want to say something.  Your mother hasn't heard."  He announced
+Emily's ignorance of what he hadn't told her, as if it were a
+grievance.
+
+"Your father's been in a great state all the evening.  I'm sure I
+don't know what about."
+
+The faint 'whisk-whisk' of the brushes continued the soothing of
+her voice.
+
+"No! you know nothing," said James.  "Soames can tell me."  And,
+fixing his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain,
+uncomfortable to watch, on his son, he muttered:
+
+"I'm getting on, Soames.  At my age I can't tell.  I might die any
+time.  There'll be a lot of money.  There's Rachel and Cicely got
+no children; and Val's out there--that chap his father will get
+hold of all he can.  And somebody'll pick up Imogen, I shouldn't
+wonder."
+
+Soames listened vaguely--he had heard all this before.  Whish-
+whish!  went the brushes.
+
+"If that's all!"   said Emily.
+
+"All!" cried James; "it's nothing.  I'm coming to that."  And again
+his eyes strained pitifully at Soames.
+
+"It's you, my boy," he said suddenly; "you ought to get a divorce."
+
+That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for Soames'
+composure.  His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on the
+buttonhook, and as if in apology James hurried on:
+
+"I don't know what's become of her--they say she's abroad.  Your
+Uncle Swithin used to admire her--he was a funny fellow."  (So he
+always alluded to his dead twin-'The Stout and the Lean of it,'
+they had been called.)  "She wouldn't be alone, I should say."  And
+with that summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he
+was silent, watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird's.
+Soames, too, was silent.  Whish-whish went the brushes.
+
+"Come, James!  Soames knows best.  It's his 'business."
+
+"Ah!" said James, and the word came from deep down; "but there's
+all my money, and there's his--who's it to go to?  And when he dies
+the name goes out."
+
+Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
+dressing-table coverlet.
+
+"The name?" said Emily, "there are all the other Forsytes."
+
+"As if that helped me," muttered James.  "I shall be in my grave,
+and there'll be nobody, unless he marries again."
+
+"You're quite right," said Soames quietly; "I'm getting a divorce."
+
+James' eyes almost started from his head.
+
+"What?" he cried.  "There! nobody tells me anything."
+
+"Well," said Emily, "who would have imagined you wanted it?  My
+dear boy, that is a surprise, after all these years."
+
+"It'll be a scandal," muttered James, as if to himself; "but I
+can't help that.  Don't brush so hard.  When'll it come on?"
+
+"Before the Long Vacation; it's not defended."
+
+James' lips moved in secret calculation.  "I shan't live to see my
+grandson," he muttered.
+
+Emily ceased brushing.  "Of course you will, James.  Soames will be
+as quick as he can."
+
+There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.
+
+"Here! let's have the eau-de-Cologne," and, putting it to his nose,
+he moved his forehead in the direction of his son.  Soames bent
+over and kissed that brow just where the hair began.  A relaxing
+quiver passed over James' face, as though the wheels of anxiety
+within were running down.
+
+"I'll get to bed," he said; "I shan't want to see the papers when
+that comes.  They're a morbid lot; I can't pay attention to them,
+I'm too old."
+
+Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father say:
+
+"Here, I'm tired.  I'll say a prayer in bed."
+
+And his mother answering
+
+"That's right, James; it'll be ever so much more comfy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+OUT OF THE WEB
+
+
+On Forsyte 'Change the announcement of Jolly's death, among a
+batch of troopers, caused mixed sensation.  Strange to read that
+Jolyon Forsyte (fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of
+disease in the service of his country, and not be able to feel it
+personally.  It revived the old grudge against his father for
+having estranged himself.  For such was still the prestige of old
+Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never quite feel, as might
+have been expected, that it was they who had cut off his
+descendants for irregularity.  The news increased, of course, the
+interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val's name was Dartie, and
+even if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross, it
+would not be at all the same as if his name were Forsyte.  Not even
+casualty or glory to the Haymans would be really satisfactory.
+Family pride felt defrauded.
+
+How the rumour arose, then, that 'something very dreadful, my
+dear,' was pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell, secret
+as he kept everything.  Possibly some eye had seen 'Forsyte v.
+Forsyte and Forsyte,' in the cause list; and had added it to 'Irene
+in Paris with a fair beard.'  Possibly some wall at Park Lane had
+ears.  The fact remained that it was known--whispered among the
+old, discussed among the young--that family pride must soon receive
+a blow.
+
+Soames, paying one, of his Sunday visits to Timothy's--paying it
+with the feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying no
+more--felt knowledge in the air as he came in.  Nobody, of course,
+dared speak of it before him, but each of the four other Forsytes
+present held their breath, aware that nothing could prevent Aunt
+Juley from making them all uncomfortable.  She looked so piteously
+at Soames, she checked herself on the point of speech so often,
+that Aunt Hester excused herself and said she must go and bathe
+Timothy's eye--he had a sty coming.  Soames, impassive, slightly
+supercilious, did not stay long.  He went out with a curse stifled
+behind his pale, just smiling lips.
+
+Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the
+coming scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his
+retirement--for he had come to that grim conclusion.  To go on
+seeing all those people who had known him as a 'long-headed chap,'
+an astute adviser--after that--no!  The fastidiousness and pride
+which was so strangely, so inextricably blended in him with
+possessive obtuseness, revolted against the thought.  He would
+retire, live privately, go on buying pictures, make a great name as
+a collector--after all, his heart was more in that than it had ever
+been in Law.  In pursuance of this now fixed resolve, he had to get
+ready to amalgamate his business with another firm without letting
+people know, for that would excite curiosity and make humiliation
+cast its shadow before.  He had pitched on the firm of Cuthcott,
+Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead.  The full name after
+the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott, Holliday, Kingson,
+Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.  But after debate as to which of the
+dead still had any influence with the living, it was decided to
+reduce the title to Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte, of whom Kingson
+would be the active and Soames the sleeping partner.  For leaving
+his name, prestige, and clients behind him, Soames would receive
+considerable value.
+
+One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a
+stage of his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth,
+and after writing off liberally for depreciation by the war, found
+his value to be some hundred and thirty thousand pounds.  At his
+father's death, which could not, alas, be delayed much longer, he
+must come into at least another fifty thousand, and his yearly
+expenditure at present just reached two.  Standing among his
+pictures, he saw before him a future full of bargains earned by the
+trained faculty of knowing better than other people.  Selling what
+was about to decline, keeping what was still going up, and
+exercising judicious insight into future taste, he would make a
+unique collection, which at his death would pass to the nation
+under the title 'Forsyte Bequest.'
+
+If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with
+Madame Lamotte.  She had, he knew, but one real ambition--to live
+on her 'renter' in Paris near her grandchildren.  He would buy the
+goodwill of the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price.  Madame would
+live like a Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested as she
+would know how.  (Incidentally Soames meant to put a capable
+manager in her place, and make the restaurant pay good interest on
+his money.  There were great possibilities in Soho.)  On Annette he
+would promise to settle fifteen thousand pounds (whether designedly
+or not), precisely the sum old Jolyon had settled on 'that woman.'
+
+A letter from Jolyon's solicitor to his own had disclosed the fact
+that 'those two' were in Italy.  And an opportunity had been duly
+given for noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in London.
+The matter was clear as daylight, and would be disposed of in half
+an hour or so; but during that half-hour he, Soames, would go down
+to hell; and after that half-hour all bearers of the Forsyte name
+would feel the bloom was off the rose.  He had no illusions like
+Shakespeare that roses by any other name would smell as sweet.  The
+name was a possession, a concrete, unstained piece of property, the
+value of which would be reduced some twenty per cent. at least.
+Unless it were Roger, who had once refused to stand for Parliament,
+and--oh, irony!--Jolyon, hung on the line, there had never been a
+distinguished Forsyte.  But that very lack of distinction was the
+name's greatest asset.  It was a private name, intensely
+individual, and his own property; it had never been exploited for
+good or evil by intrusive report.  He and each member of his family
+owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference
+from the public than had been necessitated by their births, their
+marriages, their deaths.  And during these weeks of waiting and
+preparing to drop the Law, he conceived for that Law a bitter
+distaste, so deeply did he resent its coming violation of his name,
+forced on him by the need he felt to perpetuate that name in a
+lawful manner.  The monstrous injustice of the whole thing excited
+in him a perpetual suppressed fury.  He had asked no better than to
+live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go into the witness
+box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim his failure
+to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of
+his kind.  It was all upside down.  She and that fellow ought to be
+the sufferers, and they--were in Italy!  In these weeks the Law he
+had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian
+of all property, seemed to him quite pitiful.  What could be more
+insane than to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him
+when someone unlawfully took her away from him?  Did the Law not
+know that a man's name was to him the apple of his eye, that it was
+far harder to be regarded as cuckold than as seducer?  He actually
+envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where he, Soames, had
+failed.  The question of damages worried him, too.  He wanted to
+make that fellow suffer, but he remembered his cousin's words, "I
+shall be very happy," with the uneasy feeling that to claim damages
+would make not Jolyon but himself suffer; he felt uncannily that
+Jolyon would rather like to pay them--the chap was so loose.
+Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do.  The claim,
+indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour drew
+near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and
+topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer
+and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!"   And he
+gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money
+would be given to a Home for Fallen Women.  He was a long time
+hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched on it,
+he used to wake up in the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid;
+it'll draw attention.  Something quieter--better taste.'  He did
+not care for dogs, or he would have named them; and it was in
+desperation at last--for his knowledge of charities was limited--
+that he decided on the blind.  That could not be inappropriate, and
+it would make the Jury assess the damages high.
+
+A good many suits were dropping out of the list, which happened to
+be exceptionally thin that summer, so that his case would be
+reached before August.  As the day grew nearer, Winifred was his
+only comfort.  She showed the fellow-feeling of one who had been
+through the mill, and was the 'femme-sole' in whom he confided,
+well knowing that she would not let Dartie into her confidence.
+That ruffian would be only too rejoiced!  At the end of July, on
+the afternoon before the case, he went in to see her.  They had not
+yet been able to leave town, because Dartie had already spent their
+summer holiday, and Winifred dared not go to her father for more
+money while he was waiting not to be told anything about this
+affair of Soames.
+
+Soames found her with a letter in her hand.
+
+"That from Val," he asked gloomily.  "What does he say?"
+
+"He says he's married," said Winifred.
+
+"Whom to, for Goodness' sake?"
+
+Winifred looked up at him.
+
+"To Holly Forsyte, Jolyon's daughter."
+
+"What?"
+
+"He got leave and did it.  I didn't even know he knew her.
+Awkward, isn't it?"
+
+Soames uttered a short laugh at that characteristic minimisation.
+
+"Awkward!  Well, I don't suppose they'll hear about this till they
+come back.  They'd better stay out there.  That fellow will give
+her money."
+
+"But I want Val back," said Winifred almost piteously; "I miss him,
+he helps me to get on."
+
+"I know," murmured Soames.  "How's Dartie behaving now?"
+
+"It might be worse; but it's always money.  Would you like me to
+come down to the Court to-morrow, Soames?"
+
+Soames stretched out his hand for hers.  The gesture so betrayed
+the loneliness in him that she pressed it between her two.
+
+"Never mind, old boy.  You'll feel ever so much better when it's
+all over."
+
+"I don't know what I've done," said Soames huskily; "I never have.
+It's all upside down.  I was fond of her; I've always been."
+
+Winifred saw a drop of blood ooze out of his lip, and the sight
+stirred her profoundly.
+
+"Of course," she said, "it's been too bad of her all along!  But
+what shall I do about this marriage of Val's, Soames?  I don't know
+how to write to him, with this coming on.  You've seen that child.
+Is she pretty?"
+
+"Yes, she's pretty," said Soames.  "Dark--lady-like enough."
+
+'That doesn't sound so bad,' thought Winifred.  'Jolyon had style.'
+
+"It is a coil," she said.  " What will father say ?
+
+"Mustn't be told," said Soames.  "The war'll soon be over now,
+you'd better let Val take to farming out there."
+
+It was tantamount to saying that his nephew was lost.
+
+"I haven't told Monty," Winifred murmured desolately.
+
+The case was reached before noon next day, and was over in little
+more than half an hour.  Soames--pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the
+witness-box--had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all
+like one dead.  The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he left
+the Courts of Justice.
+
+Four hours until he became public property!  'Solicitor's divorce
+suit!'  A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within
+him.  'Damn them all!' he thought; 'I won't run away.  I'll act as
+if nothing had happened.'  And in the sweltering heat of Fleet
+Street and Ludgate Hill he walked all the way to his City Club,
+lunched, and went back to his office.  He worked there stolidly
+throughout the afternoon.
+
+On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their
+involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were
+immediately withdrawn.  In front of St. Paul's, he stopped to buy
+the most gentlemanly of the evening papers.  Yes! there he was!
+'Well-known solicitor's divorce.  Cousin co-respondent.  Damages
+given to the blind'--so, they had got that in!  At every other
+face, he thought: 'I wonder if you know!'  And suddenly he felt
+queer, as if something were racing round in his head.
+
+What was this?  He was letting it get hold of him!  He mustn't!  He
+would be ill.  He mustn't think!  He would get down to the river
+and row about, and fish.  'I'm not going to be laid up,' he
+thought.
+
+It flashed across him that he had something of importance to do
+before he went out of town.  Madame Lamotte!  He must explain the
+Law.  Another six months before he was really free!  Only he did
+not want to see Annette!  And he passed his hand over the top of
+his head--it was very hot.
+
+He branched off through Covent Garden.  On this sultry day of late
+July the garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and
+Soho seemed more than ever the disenchanted home of rapscallionism.
+Alone, the Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily painted, with its
+blue tubs and the dwarf trees therein, retained an aloof and
+Frenchified self-respect.  It was the slack hour, and pale trim
+waitresses were preparing the little tables for dinner.  Soames
+went through into the private part.  To his discomfiture Annette
+answered his knock.  She, too, looked pale and dragged down by the
+heat.
+
+"You are quite a stranger," she said languidly.
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"I haven't wished to be; I've been busy.
+
+Where's your mother, Annette?  I've got some news for her."
+
+"Mother is not in."
+
+It seemed to Soames that she looked at him in a queer way.  What
+did she know?  How much had her mother told her?  The worry of
+trying to make that out gave him an alarming feeling in the head.
+He gripped the edge of the table, and dizzily saw Annette come
+forward, her eyes clear with surprise.  He shut his own and said:
+
+"It's all right.  I've had a touch of the sun, I think."  The sun!
+What he had was a touch of 'darkness!  Annette's voice, French and
+composed, said:
+
+"Sit down, it will pass, then."  Her hand pressed his shoulder, and
+Soames sank into a chair.  When the dark feeling dispersed, and he
+opened his eyes, she was looking down at him.  What an inscrutable
+and odd expression for a girl of twenty!
+
+"Do you feel better?"
+
+"It's nothing," said Soames.  Instinct told him that to be feeble
+before her was not helping him--age was enough handicap without
+that.  Will-power was his fortune with Annette, he had lost ground
+these latter months from indecision--he could not afford to lose
+any more.  He got up, and said:
+
+"I'll write to your mother.  I'm going down to my river house for a
+long holiday.  I want you both to come there presently and stay.
+It's just at its best.  You will, won't you?"
+
+"It will be veree nice."  A pretty little roll of that 'r' but no
+enthusiasm.  And rather sadly he added:
+
+"You're feeling the heat; too, aren't you, Annette?  It'll do you
+good to be on the river.  Good-night."  Annette swayed forward.
+There was a sort of compunction in the movement.
+
+"Are you fit to go?  Shall I give you some coffee?"
+
+"No," said Soames firmly.  "Give me your hand."
+
+She held out her hand, and Soames raised it to his lips.  When he
+looked up, her face wore again that strange expression.  ' I can't
+tell,' he thought, as he went out; 'but I mustn't think--I mustn't
+worry:
+
+But worry he did, walking toward Pall Mall.  English, not of her
+religion, middle-aged, scarred as it were by domestic tragedy, what
+had he to give her?  Only wealth, social position, leisure,
+admiration!  It was much, but was it enough for a beautiful girl of
+twenty?  He felt so ignorant about Annette.  He had, too, a curious
+fear of the French nature of her mother and herself.  They knew so
+well what they wanted.  They were almost Forsytes.  They would
+never grasp a shadow and miss a substance
+
+The tremendous effort it was to write a simple note to Madame
+Lamotte when he reached his Club warned him still further that he
+was at the end of his tether.
+
+
+"MY DEAR MADAME (he said),
+
+"You will see by the enclosed newspaper cutting that I obtained my
+decree of divorce to-day.  By the English Law I shall not, however,
+be free to marry again till the decree is confirmed six months
+hence.  In the meanwhile I have the honor to ask to be considered a
+formal suitor for the hand of your daughter.  I shall write again
+in a few days and beg you both to come and stay at my river house.
+"I am, dear Madame,
+"Sincerely yours,
+
+"SOAMES FORSYTE.'
+
+
+Having sealed and posted this letter, he went into the dining-room.
+Three mouthfuls of soup convinced him that he could not eat; and,
+causing a cab to be summoned, he drove to Paddington Station and
+took the first train to Reading.  He reached his house just as the
+sun went down, and wandered out on to the lawn.  The air was
+drenched with the scent of pinks and picotees in his flower-
+borders.  A stealing coolness came off the river.
+
+Rest-peace!  Let a poor fellow rest!  Let not worry and shame and
+anger chase like evil nightbirds in his head!  Like those doves
+perched half-sleeping on their dovecot, like the furry creatures in
+the woods on the far side, and the simple folk in their cottages,
+like the trees and the river itself, whitening fast in twilight,
+like the darkening cornflower-blue sky where stars were coming up--
+let him cease from himself, and rest!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+PASSING OF AN AGE
+
+
+
+The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the last
+day of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily was
+told until it was accomplished.
+
+The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet
+hotels in London where greater expense can be incurred for less
+result than anywhere else under heaven.  Her beauty in the best
+Parisian frocks was giving him more satisfaction than if he had
+collected a perfect bit of china, or a jewel of a picture; he
+looked forward to the moment when he would exhibit her in Park
+Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy's.
+
+If some one had asked him in those days, "In confidence--are you in
+love with this girl?" he would have replied: "In love?  What is
+love?  If you mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in those
+old days when I first met her and she would not have me; when I
+sighed and starved after her and couldn't rest a minute until she
+yielded--no!  If you mean do I admire her youth and prettiness, do
+my senses ache a little when I see her moving about--yes!  Do I
+think she will keep me straight, make me a creditable wife and a
+good mother for my children?--again, yes!"
+
+"What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the women
+who are married get from the men who marry them?" And if the
+enquirer had pursued his query, "And do you think it was fair to
+have tempted this girl to give herself to you for life unless you
+have really touched her heart?" he would have answered: "The French
+see these things differently from us.  They look at marriage from
+the point of view of establishments and children; and, from my own
+experience, I am not at all sure that theirs is not the sensible
+view.  I shall not expect this time more than I can get, or she can
+give.  Years hence I shouldn't be surprised if I have trouble with
+her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have children by then.  I
+shall shut my eyes.  I have had my great passion; hers is perhaps
+to come--I don't suppose it will be for me.  I offer her a great
+deal, and I don't expect much in return, except children, or at
+least a son.  But one thing I am sure of--she has very good sense!"
+
+And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, "You do not look,
+then, for spiritual union in this marriage?" Soames would have
+lifted his sideway smile, and rejoined: "That's as it may be.  If I
+get satisfaction for my senses, perpetuation of myself; good taste
+and good humour in the house; it is all I can expect at my age.  I
+am not likely to be going out of my way towards any far-fetched
+sentimentalism."  Whereon, the enquirer must in good taste have
+ceased enquiry.
+
+The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth
+grey with unshed tears.  Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette
+beside him in dark furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning of
+the funeral procession, to the rails in Hyde Park.  Little moved
+though he ever was by public matters, this event, supremely
+symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich period, impressed his
+fancy.  In '37, when she came to the throne, 'Superior Dosset' was
+still building houses to make London hideous; and James, a
+stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his
+practice in the Law.  Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved
+their upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; 'tigers' swung behind
+cabriolets; women said, 'La!' and owned no property; there were
+manners in the land, and pigsties for the poor; unhappy devils were
+hanged for little crimes, and Dickens had but just begun to write.
+Well-nigh two generations had slipped by--of steamboats, railways,
+telegraphs, bicycles, electric light, telephones, and now these
+motorcars--of such accumulated wealth, that eight per cent. had
+become three, and Forsytes were numbered by the thousand!  Morals
+had changed, manners had changed, men had become monkeys twice-
+removed, God had become Mammon--Mammon so respectable as to deceive
+himself: Sixty-four years that favoured property, and had made the
+upper middle class; buttressed, chiselled, polished it, till it was
+almost indistinguishable in manners, morals, speech, appearance,
+habit, and soul from the nobility.  An epoch which had gilded
+individual liberty so that if a man had money, he was free in law
+and fact, and if he had not money he was free in law and not in
+fact.  An era which had canonised hypocrisy, so that to seem to be
+respectable was to be.  A great Age, whose transmuting influence
+nothing had escaped save the nature of man and the nature of the
+Universe.
+
+And to witness the passing of this Age, London--its pet and fancy--
+was pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde Park,
+hub of Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.  Under the
+grey heavens, whose drizzle just kept off, the dark concourse
+gathered to see the show.  The 'good old'  Queen, full of years and
+virtue, had emerged from her seclusion for the last time to make a
+London holiday.  From Houndsditch, Acton, Ealing, Hampstead,
+Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney, Hornsey, Leytonstone,
+Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green pastures where Forsytes
+flourish--Mayfair and Kensington, St. James' and Belgravia,
+Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent's Park, the people swarmed
+down on to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky
+pomp and pageantry.  Never again would a Queen reign so long, or
+people have a chance to see so much history buried for their money.
+A pity the war dragged on, and that the Wreath of Victory could not
+be laid upon her coffin!  All else would be there to follow and
+commemorate--soldiers, sailors, foreign princes, half-masted
+bunting, tolling bells, and above all the surging, great,
+dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple sadness here and there
+deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation.  After
+all, more than a Queen was going to her rest, a woman who had
+braved sorrow, lived well and wisely according to her lights.
+
+Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in
+Annette's, Soames waited.  Yes!  the Age was passing!  What with
+this Trade Unionism, and Labour fellows in the House of Commons,
+with continental fiction, and something in the general feel of
+everything, not to be expressed in words, things were very
+different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking night, and George
+Forsyte saying: "They're all socialists, they want our goods."
+Like James, Soames didn't know, he couldn't tell--with Edward on
+the throne!  Things would never be as safe again as under good old
+Viccy!  Convulsively he pressed his young wife's arm.  There, at
+any rate, was something substantially his own, domestically certain
+again at last; something which made property worth while--a real
+thing once more.  Pressed close against her and trying to ward
+others off, Soames was content.  The crowd swayed round them, ate
+sandwiches and dropped crumbs; boys who had climbed the plane-trees
+chattered above like monkeys, threw twigs and orange-peel.  It was
+past time; they should be coming soon!  And, suddenly, a little
+behind them to the left, he saw a tallish man with a soft hat and
+short grizzling beard, and a tallish woman in a little round fur
+cap and veil.  Jolyon and Irene talking, smiling at each other,
+close together like Annette and himself!  They had not seen him;
+and stealthily, with a very queer feeling in his heart, Soames
+watched those two.  They looked happy!  What had they come here
+for--inherently illicit creatures, rebels from the Victorian ideal?
+What business had they in this crowd?  Each of them twice exiled by
+morality--making a boast, as it were, of love and laxity!  He
+watched them fascinated; admitting grudgingly even with his arm
+thrust through Annette's that--that she--Irene--No! he would not
+admit it; and he turned his eyes away.  He would not see them, and
+let the old bitterness, the old longing rise up within him!  And
+then Annette turned to him and said: "Those two people, Soames;
+they know you, I am sure.  Who are they?"
+
+Soames nosed sideways.
+
+"What people?"
+
+"There, you see them; just turning away.  They know you."
+
+"No," Soames answered; "a mistake, my dear."
+
+"A lovely face!  And how she walk!  Elle est tres distinguee!"
+
+Soames looked then.  Into his life, out of his life she had walked
+like that swaying and erect, remote, unseizabIe; ever eluding the
+contact of his soul!  He turned abruptly from that receding
+vision of the past.
+
+"You'd better attend," he said, "they're coming now!"
+
+But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the head
+of the procession, he was quivering with the sense of always
+missing something, with instinctive regret that he had not got them
+both.
+
+Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long line
+wound in through the Park gate.  He heard Annette whisper, "How sad
+it is and beautiful!" felt the clutch of her hand as she stood up
+on tiptoe; and the crowd's emotion gripped him.  There it was--the
+bier of the Queen, coffin of the Age slow passing!  And as it went
+by there came a murmuring groan from all the long line of those who
+watched, a sound such as Soames had never heard, so unconscious,
+primitive, deep and wild, that neither he nor any knew whether they
+had joined in uttering it.  Strange sound, indeed!  Tribute of an
+Age to its own death....  Ah!  Ah!....  The hold on life had
+slipped.  That which had seemed eternal was gone!  The Queen--God
+bless her!
+
+It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves
+on over grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside
+down the dense crowds mile after mile.  It was a human sound, and
+yet inhuman, pushed out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate
+knowledge of universal death and change.  None of us--none of us
+can hold on for ever!
+
+It left silence for a little--a very little time, till tongues
+began, eager to retrieve interest in the show.  Soames lingered
+just long enough to gratify Annette, then took her out of the Park
+to lunch at his father's in Park Lane....
+
+James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window.  The
+last show he would see, last of so many!  So she was gone!  Well,
+she was getting an old woman.  Swithin and he had seen her crowned-
+-slim slip of a girl, not so old as Imogen!  She had got very stout
+of late.  Jolyon and he had seen her married to that German chap,
+her husband--he had turned out all right before he died, and left
+her with that son of his.  And he remembered the many evenings he
+and his brothers and their cronies had wagged their heads over
+their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his salad days.  And now
+he had come to the throne.  They said he had steadied down--he
+didn't know--couldn't tell!  He'd make the money fly still, he
+shouldn't wonder.  What a lot of people out there!  It didn't seem
+so very long since he and Swithin stood in the crowd outside
+Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin had taken him
+to Cremorne afterwards--racketty chap, Swithin; no, it didn't seem
+much longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had joined with Roger in
+renting a balcony in Piccadilly.
+
+Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in August!
+And there was Soames married again to a French girl.  The French
+were a queer lot, but they made good mothers, he had heard.  Things
+changed!  They said this German Emperor was here for the funeral,
+his telegram to old Kruger had been in shocking taste.  He should
+not be surprised if that chap made trouble some day.  Change!  H'm!
+Well, they must look after themselves when he was gone: he didn't
+know where he'd be!  And now Emily had asked Dartie to lunch, with
+Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames' wife--she was always doing
+something.  And there was Irene living with that fellow Jolyon,
+they said.  He'd marry her now, he supposed.
+
+'My brother Jolyon,' he thought, 'what would he have said to it
+all?' And somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his elder
+brother, once so looked up to, would have said, so worried James
+that he got up from his chair by the window, and began slowly,
+feebly to pace the room.
+
+'She was a pretty thing, too,' he thought; 'I was fond of her.
+Perhaps Soames didn't suit her--I don't know--I can't tell.  We
+never had any trouble with our wives.'  Women had changed
+everything had changed!  And now the Queen was dead--well, there it
+was!  A movement in the crowd brought him to a standstill at the
+window, his nose touching the pane and whitening from the chill of
+it.  They had got her as far as Hyde Park Corner--they were passing
+now!  Why didn't Emily come up here where she could see, instead of
+fussing about lunch.  He missed her at that moment--missed her!
+Through the bare branches of the plane-trees he could just see the
+procession, could see the hats coming off the people's heads--a lot
+of them would catch colds, he shouldn't wonder!  A voice behind him
+said:
+
+"You've got a capital view here, James!"
+
+"There you are!" muttered James; "why didn't you come before?  You
+might have missed it!"
+
+And he was silent, staring with all his might.
+
+"What's the noise?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"There's no noise," returned Emily; "what are you thinking of?--
+they wouldn't cheer."
+
+"I can hear it."
+
+"Nonsense, James!"
+
+No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was the
+groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.
+
+"Don't you ever tell me where I'm buried," he said suddenly.  "I
+shan't want to know."  And he turned from the window.  There she
+went, the old Queen; she'd had a lot of anxiety--she'd be glad to
+be out of it, he should think!
+
+Emily took up the hair-brushes.
+
+"There'll be just time to brush your head," she said, "before they
+come.  You must look your best, James."
+
+"Ah!" muttered James; "they say she's pretty."
+
+The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the
+dining-room.  James was seated by the fire when she was brought in.
+He placed, his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly raised
+himself.  Stooping and immaculate in his frock-coat, thin as a line
+in Euclid, he received Annette's hand in his; and the anxious eyes
+of his furrowed face, which had lost its colour now, doubted above
+her.  A little warmth came into them and into his cheeks, refracted
+from her bloom.
+
+"How are you?" he said.  "You've been to see the Queen, I suppose?
+Did you have a good crossing?"
+
+In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of his
+name.
+
+Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette murmured
+something in French which James did not understand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, "you want your lunch, I expect.  Soames, ring
+the bell; we won't wait for that chap Dartie."  But just then they
+arrived.  Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see 'the old
+girl.'  With an early cocktail beside him, he had taken a 'squint'
+from the smoking-room of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen
+had been obliged to come back from the Park to fetch him thence.
+His brown eyes rested on Annette with a stare of almost startled
+satisfaction.  The second beauty that fellow Soames had picked up!
+What women could see in him!  Well, she would play him the same
+trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a lucky
+devil!  And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of
+Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his
+assurance.  Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred's
+composure, Imogen's enquiring friendliness, Dartie's showing-off,
+and James' solicitude about her food, it was not, Soames felt, a
+successful lunch for his bride.  He took her away very soon.
+
+"That Monsieur Dartie," said Annette in the cab, "je n'aime pas ce
+type-la!"
+
+"No, by George!" said Soames.
+
+"Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty.  Your father
+is veree old.  I think your mother has trouble with him; I should
+not like to be her."
+
+Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his
+young wife; but it disquieted him a little.  The thought may have
+just flashed through him, too: 'When I'm eighty she'll be
+fifty-five, having trouble with me!'
+
+"There's just one other house of my relations I must take you to,"
+he said; "you'll find it funny, but we must get it over; and then
+we'll dine and go to the theatre."
+
+In this way he prepared her for Timothy's.  But Timothy's was
+different.  They were delighted to see dear Soames after this long
+long time; and so this was Annette!
+
+"You are so pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for dear
+Soames, aren't you?  But he's very attentive and careful--such a
+good hush...."  Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips
+just under each of Annette's eyes--she afterwards described them to
+Francie, who dropped in, as: "Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I quite
+wanted to kiss them.  I must say dear Soames is a perfect
+connoisseur.  In her French way, and not so very French either, I
+think she's as pretty--though not so distinguished, not so
+alluring--as Irene.  Because she was alluring, wasn't she? with
+that white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, couleur de--
+what was it?  I always forget."
+
+"Feuille morte," Francie prompted.
+
+"Of course, dead leaves--so strange.  I remember when I was a girl,
+before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy--to 'walk' it was
+called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest, and
+beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady."
+
+"Yes, auntie," said Francie, "but I don't see the connection."
+
+"Oh!" replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, "it was so alluring,
+and her eyes and hair, you know...."  She was silent, as if
+surprised in some indelicacy.  "Feuille morte," she added suddenly;
+"Hester--do remember that!"....
+
+Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether
+Timothy should or should not be summoned to see Annette.
+
+"Oh, don't bother!" said Soames.
+
+"But it's no trouble, only of course Annette's being French might
+upset him a little.  He was so scared about Fashoda.  I think
+perhaps we had better not run the risk, Hester.  It's nice to have
+her all to ourselves, isn't it?  And how are you, Soames?  Have you
+quite got over your...."
+
+Hester interposed hurriedly:
+
+"What do you think of London, Annette?"
+
+Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply.  It came, sensible,
+composed: "Oh! I know London.  I have visited before."
+
+He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the
+restaurant.  The French had different notions about gentility, and
+to shrink from connection with it might seem to her ridiculous; he
+had waited to be married before mentioning it; and now he wished he
+hadn't.
+
+"And what part do you know best?" said Aunt Juley.
+
+"Soho," said Annette simply.
+
+Soames snapped his jaw.
+
+"Soho?" repeated Aunt Juley; "Soho?"
+
+'That'll go round the family,' thought Soames.
+
+"It's very French, and interesting," he said.
+
+"Yes," murmured Aunt Juley, "your Uncle Roger had some houses there
+once; he was always having to turn the tenants out, I remember."
+
+Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.
+
+"Of course," said Aunt Juley, "you will be going down there soon to
+settle in.  We are all so looking forward to the time when Annette
+has a dear little...."
+
+"Juley!" cried Aunt Hester desperately, "ring tea!"
+
+Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.
+
+"I shouldn't mention Soho if I were you," he said in the cab.
+"It's rather a shady part of London; and you're altogether above
+that restaurant business now; I mean," he added, "I want you to
+know nice people, and the English are fearful snobs."
+
+Annette's clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.
+
+"Yes?" she said.
+
+'H'm!' thought Soames, 'that's meant for me!' and he looked at her
+hard.  'She's got good business instincts,' he thought.  'I must
+make her grasp it once for all!'
+
+"Look here, Annette!  it's very simple, only it wants
+understanding.  Our professional and leisured classes still think
+themselves a cut above our business classes, except of course the
+very rich.  It may be stupid, but there it is, you see.  It isn't
+advisable in England to let people know that you ran a restaurant
+or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade.  It may have been
+extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on you; you don't
+have such a good time, or meet such nice people--that's all."
+
+"I see," said Annette; "it is the same in France."
+
+"Oh!" murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback.  "Of
+course, class is everything, really."
+
+"Yes," said Annette; "comme vous etes sage."
+
+'That's all right,' thought Soames, watching her lips, 'only she's
+pretty cynical.'  His knowledge of French was not yet such as to
+make him grieve that she had not said 'tu.'  He slipped his arm
+round her, and murmured with an effort:
+
+"Et vous etes ma belle femme."
+
+Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.
+
+"Oh, non!" she said.  "Oh, non! ne parlez pas Francais, Soames.
+What is that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?"
+
+Soames bit his lip.  "God knows!" he said; "she's always saying
+something;" but he knew better than God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SUSPENDED ANIMATION
+
+
+The war dragged on.  Nicholas had been heard to say that it would
+cost three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they'd done
+with it!  The income-tax was seriously threatened.  Still, there
+would be South Africa for their money, once for all.  And though
+the possessive instinct felt badly shaken at three o'clock in the
+morning, it recovered by breakfast-time with the recollection that
+one gets nothing in this world without paying for it.  So, on the
+whole, people went about their business much as if there were no
+war, no concentration camps, no slippery de Wet, no feeling on the
+Continent, no anything unpleasant.  Indeed, the attitude of the
+nation was typified by Timothy's map, whose animation was
+suspended--for Timothy no longer moved the flags, and they could
+not move themselves, not even backwards and forwards as they should
+have done.
+
+Suspended animation went further; it invaded Forsyte 'Change, and
+produced a general uncertainty as to what was going to happen next.
+The announcement in the marriage column of The Times, 'Jolyon
+Forsyte to Irene, only daughter of the late Professor Heron,' had
+occasioned doubt whether Irene had been justly described.  And yet,
+on the whole, relief was felt that she had not been entered as
+'Irene, late the wife,' or 'the divorced wife,' 'of Soames
+Forsyte.'  Altogether, there had been a kind of sublimity from the
+first about the way the family had taken that 'affair.'  As James
+had phrased it, 'There it was!'  No use to fuss!  Nothing to be had
+out of admitting that it had been a 'nasty jar'--in the phraseology
+of the day.
+
+But what would happen now that both Soames and Jolyon were married
+again?  That was very intriguing.  George was known to have laid
+Eustace six to four on a little Jolyon before a little Soames.
+George was so droll!  It was rumoured, too, that he and Dartie had
+a bet as to whether James would attain the age of ninety, though
+which of them had backed James no one knew.
+
+Early in May, Winifred came round to say that Val had been wounded
+in the leg by a spent bullet, and was to be discharged.  His wife
+was nursing him.  He would have a little limp--nothing to speak of.
+He wanted his grandfather to buy him a farm out there where he
+could breed horses.  Her father was giving Holly eight hundred a
+year, so they could be quite comfortable, because his grandfather
+would give Val five, he had said; but as to the farm, he didn't
+know--couldn't tell: he didn't want Val to go throwing away his
+money.
+
+"But you know," said Winifred, "he must do something."
+
+Aunt Hester thought that perhaps his dear grandfather was wise,
+because if he didn't buy a farm it couldn't turn out badly.
+
+"But Val loves horses," said Winifred.  "It'd be such an occupation
+for him."
+
+Aunt Juley thought that horses were very uncertain, had not
+Montague found them so?
+
+"Val's different," said Winifred; "he takes after me."
+
+Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever.  "I always
+remember," she added, "how he gave his bad penny to a beggar.  His
+dear grandfather was so pleased.  He thought it showed such
+presence of mind.  I remember his saying that he ought to go into
+the Navy."
+
+Aunt Hester chimed in: Did not Winifred think that it was much
+better for the young people to be secure and not run any risk at
+their age?
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "if they were in London, perhaps; in London
+it's amusing to do nothing.  But out there, of course, he'll simply
+get bored to death."
+
+Aunt Hester thought that it would be nice for him to work, if he
+were quite sure not to lose by it.  It was not as if they had no
+money.  Timothy, of course, had done so well by retiring.  Aunt
+Juley wanted to know what Montague had said.
+
+Winifred did not tell her, for Montague had merely remarked: "Wait
+till the old man dies."
+
+At this moment Francie was announced.  Her eyes were brimming with
+a smile.
+
+"Well," she said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"Of what, dear?"
+
+"In The Times this morning."
+
+"We haven't seen it, we always read it after dinner; Timothy has it
+till then."
+
+Francie rolled her eyes.
+
+"Do you think you ought to tell us?" said Aunt Juley.  "What was
+it?"
+
+"Irene's had a son at Robin Hill."
+
+Aunt Juley drew in her breath.  "But," she said, "they were only
+married in March!"
+
+"Yes, Auntie; isn't it interesting?"
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "I'm glad.  I was sorry for Jolyon losing
+his boy.  It might have been Val."
+
+Aunt Juley seemed to go into a sort of dream.  "I wonder," she
+murmured, "what dear Soames will think?  He has so wanted to have a
+son himself.  A little bird has always told me that."
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "he's going to--bar accidents."
+
+Gladness trickled out of Aunt Juley's eyes.
+
+"How delightful!" she said.  "When?"
+
+"November."
+
+Such a lucky month!  But she did wish it could be sooner.  It was a
+long time for James to wait, at his age!
+
+To wait!  They dreaded it for James, but they were used to it
+themselves.  Indeed, it was their great distraction.  To wait!  For
+The Times to read; for one or other of their nieces or nephews to
+come in and cheer them up; for news of Nicholas' health; for that
+decision of Christopher's about going on the stage; for information
+concerning the mine of Mrs. MacAnder's nephew; for the doctor to
+come about Hester's inclination to wake up early in the morning;
+for books from the library which were always out; for Timothy to
+have a cold; for a nice quiet warm day, not too hot, when they
+could take a turn in Kensington Gardens.  To wait, one on each side
+of the hearth in the drawing-room, for the clock between them to
+strike; their thin, veined, knuckled hands plying knitting-needles
+and crochet-hooks, their hair ordered to stop--like Canute's waves-
+-from any further advance in colour.  To wait in their black silks
+or satins for the Court to say that Hester might wear her dark
+green, and Juley her darker maroon.  To wait, slowly turning over
+and over, in their old minds the little joys and sorrows, events
+and expectancies, of their little family world, as cows chew
+patient cuds in a familiar field.  And this new event was so well
+worth waiting for.  Soames had always been their pet, with his
+tendency to give them pictures, and his almost weekly visits which
+they missed so much, and his need for their sympathy evoked by the
+wreck of his first marriage.  This new event--the birth of an heir
+to Soames-- was so important for him, and for his dear father, too,
+that James might not have to die without some certainty about
+things.  James did so dislike uncertainty; and with Montague, of
+course, he could not feel really satisfied to leave no grand-
+children but the young Darties.  After all, one's own name did
+count!  And as James' ninetieth birthday neared they wondered what
+precautions he was taking.  He would be the frst of the Forsytes to
+reach that age, and set, as it were, a new standard in holding on
+to life.  That was so important, they felt, at their ages eighty-
+seven and eighty-five; though they did not want to think of
+themselves when they had Timothy, who was not yet eighty-two, to
+think of.  There was, of course, a better world.  'In my Father's
+house are many mansions' was one of Aunt Juley's favourite sayings-
+-it always comforted her, with its suggestion of house property,
+which had made the fortune of dear Roger.  The Bible was, indeed, a
+great resource, and on very fine Sundays there was church in the
+morning; and sometimes Juley would steal into Timothy's study when
+she was sure he was out, and just put an open New Testament
+casually among the books on his little table--he was a great
+reader, of course, having been a publisher.  But she had noticed
+that Timothy was always cross at dinner afterwards.  And Smither
+had told her more than once that she had picked books off the floor
+in doing the room.  Still, with all that, they did feel that heaven
+could not be quite so cosy as the rooms in which they and Timothy
+had been waiting so long.  Aunt Hester, especially, could not bear
+the thought of the exertion.  Any change, or rather the thought of
+a change--for there never was any--always upset her very much.
+Aunt Juley, who had more spirit, sometimes thought it would be
+quite exciting; she had so enjoyed that visit to Brighton the year
+dear Susan died.  But then Brighton one knew was nice, and it was
+so difficult to tell what heaven would be like, so on the whole she
+was more than content to wait.
+
+On the morning of James' birthday, August the 5th, they felt
+extraordinary animation, and little notes passed between them by
+the hand of Smither while they were having breakfast in their beds.
+Smither must go round and take their love and little presents and
+find out how Mr. James was, and whether he had passed a good night
+with all the excitement.  And on the way back would Smither call in
+at Green Street--it was a little out of her way, but she could take
+the bus up Bond Street afterwards; it would be a nice little change
+for her--and ask dear Mrs. Dartie to be sure and look in before she
+went out of town.
+
+All this Smither did--an undeniable servant trained many years ago
+under Aunt Ann to a perfection not now procurable.  Mr. James, so
+Mrs. James said, had passed an excellent night, he sent his love;
+Mrs. James had said he was very funny and had complained that he
+didn't know what all the fuss was about.  Oh! and Mrs. Dartie sent
+her love, and she would come to tea.
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester, rather hurt that their presents had not
+received special mention--they forgot every year that James could
+not bear to receive presents, 'throwing away their money on him,'
+as he always called it--were 'delighted'; it showed that James was
+in good spirits, and that was so important for him.  And they began
+to wait for Winifred.  She came at four, bringing Imogen, and Maud,
+just back from school, and 'getting such a pretty girl, too,' so
+that it was extremely difficult to ask for news about Annette.
+Aunt Juley, however, summoned courage to enquire whether Winifred
+had heard anything, and if Soames was anxious.
+
+"Uncle Soames is always anxious, Auntie," interrupted Imogen; "he
+can't be happy now he's got it."
+
+The words struck familiarly on Aunt Juley's ears.  Ah! yes; that
+funny drawing of George's, which had not been shown them!  But what
+did Imogen mean?  That her uncle always wanted more than he could
+have?  It was not at all nice to think like that.
+
+Imogen's voice rose clear and clipped:
+
+"Imagine!  Annette's only two years older than me; it must be awful
+for her, married to Uncle Soames."
+
+Aunt Juley lifted her hands in horror.
+
+"My dear," she said, "you don't know what you're talking about.
+Your Uncle Soames is a match for anybody.  He's a very clever man,
+and good-looking and wealthy, and most considerate and careful, and
+not at all old, considering everything."
+
+Imogen, turning her luscious glance from one to the other of the
+'old dears,' only smiled.
+
+"I hope," said Aunt Juley quite severely, "that you will marry as
+good a man."
+
+"I shan't marry a good man, Auntie," murmured Imogen; "they're
+dull."
+
+"If you go on like this," replied Aunt Juley, still very much
+upset, "you won't marry anybody.  We'd better not pursue the
+subject;" and turning to Winifred, she said: "How is Montague?"
+
+That evening, while they were waiting for dinner, she murmured:
+
+"I've told Smither to get up half a bottle of the sweet champagne,
+Hester.  I think we ought to drink dear James' health, and--and the
+health of Soames' wife; only, let's keep that quite secret.  I'll
+Just say like this, 'And you know, Hester!'  and then we'll drink.
+It might upset Timothy."
+
+"It's more likely to upset us," said Aunt Nester.  "But we must, I
+suppose; for such an occasion."
+
+"Yes," said Aunt Juley rapturously, "it is an occasion!  Only fancy
+if he has a dear little boy, to carry the family on!  I do feel it
+so important, now that Irene has had a son.  Winifred says George
+is calling Jolyon 'The Three-Decker,' because of his three
+families, you know!  George is droll.  And fancy!  Irene is living
+after all in the house Soames had built for them both.  It does
+seem hard on dear Soames; and he's always been so regular."
+
+That night in bed, excited and a little flushed still by her glass
+of wine and the secrecy of the second toast, she lay with her
+prayer-book opened flat, and her eyes fixed on a ceiling yellowed
+by the light from her reading-lamp.  Young things!  It was so nice
+for them all!  And she would be so happy if she could see dear
+Soames happy.  But, of course, he must be now, in spite of what
+Imogen had said.  He would have all that he wanted: property, and
+wife, and children!  And he would live to a green old age, like his
+dear father, and forget all about Irene and that dreadful case.  If
+only she herself could be here to buy his children their first
+rocking-horse!  Smither should choose it for her at the stores,
+nice and dappled.  Ah! how Roger used to rock her until she fell
+off!  Oh dear! that was a long time ago!  It was!  'In my Father's
+house are many mansions--'A little scrattling noise caught her ear-
+-'but no mice!'  she thought mechanically.  The noise increased.
+There! it was a mouse!  How naughty of Smither to say there wasn't!
+It would be eating through the wainscot before they knew where they
+were, and they would have to have the builders in.  They were such
+destructive things!  And she lay, with her eyes just moving,
+following in her mind that little scrattling sound, and waiting for
+sleep to release her from it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BIRTH OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on
+the path above the river, turned round and walked back to the
+garden door, without having realised that he had moved.  The sound
+of wheels crunching the drive convinced him that time had passed,
+and the doctor gone.  What, exactly, had he said?
+
+"This is the position, Mr. Forsyte.  I can make pretty certain of
+her life if I operate, but the baby will be born dead.  If I don't
+operate, the baby will most probably be born alive, but it's a
+great risk for the mother--a great risk.  In either case I don't
+think she can ever have another child.  In her state she obviously
+can't decide for herself, and we can't wait for her mother.  It's
+for you to make the decision, while I'm getting what's necessary.
+I shall be back within the hour."
+
+The decision!  What a decision!  No time to get a specialist down!
+No time for anything!
+
+The sound of wheels died away, but Soames still stood intent; then,
+suddenly covering his ears, he walked back to the river.  To come
+before its time like this, with no chance to foresee anything, not
+even to get her mother here!  It was for her mother to make that
+decision, and she couldn't arrive from Paris till to-night!  If
+only he could have understood the doctor's jargon, the medical
+niceties, so as to be sure he was weighing the chances properly;
+but they were Greek to him--like a legal problem to a layman.  And
+yet he must decide!  He brought his hand away from his brow wet,
+though the air was chilly.  These sounds which came from her room!
+To go back there would only make it more difficult.  He must be
+calm, clear.  On the one hand life, nearly certain, of his young
+wife, death quite certain, of his child; and--no more children
+afterwards!  On the other, death perhaps of his wife, nearly
+certain life for the child; and--no more children afterwards!
+Which to choose?....  It had rained this last fortnight--the river
+was very full, and in the water, collected round the little
+house-boat moored by his landing-stage, were many leaves from the
+woods above, brought off by a frost.  Leaves fell, lives drifted
+down--Death!  To decide about death!  And no one to give him a
+hand.  Life lost was lost for good.  Let nothing go that you could
+keep; for, if it went, you couldn't get it back.  It left you bare,
+like those trees when they lost their leaves; barer and barer until
+you, too, withered and came down.  And, by a queer somersault of
+thought, he seemed to see not Annette lying up there behind that
+window-pane on which the sun was shining, but Irene lying in their
+bedroom in Montpellier Square, as it might conceivably have been
+her fate to lie, sixteen years ago.  Would he have hesitated then?
+Not a moment!  Operate, operate!  Make certain of her life!  No
+decision--a mere instinctive cry for help, in spite of his know-
+ledge, even then, that she did not love him!  But this!  Ah! there
+was nothing overmastering in his feeling for Annette!  Many times
+these last months, especially since she had been growing fright-
+ened, he had wondered.  She had a will of her own, was selfish in
+her French way.  And yet--so pretty!  What would she wish--to take
+the risk.  'I know she wants the child,' he thought.  'If it's born
+dead, and no more chance afterwards--it'll upset her terribly.  No
+more chance!  All for nothing!  Married life with her for years and
+years without a child.  Nothing to steady her!  She's too young.
+Nothing to look forward to, for her--for me!  For me!'  He struck
+his hands against his chest!  Why couldn't he think without
+bringing himself in--get out of himself and see what he ought to
+do?  The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it had come in
+contact with a breastplate.  Out of oneself!  Impossible!  Out into
+soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless space!  The very idea
+was ghastly, futile!  And touching there the bedrock of reality,
+the bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames rested for a moment.  When
+one ceased, all ceased; it might go on, but there'd be nothing in
+it!
+
+He looked at his watch.  In half an hour the doctor would be back.
+He must decide!  If against the operation and she died, how face
+her mother and the doctor afterwards?  How face his own conscience?
+It was his child that she was having.  If for the operation--then
+he condemned them both to childlessness.  And for what else had he
+married her but to have a lawful heir?  And his father--at death's
+door, waiting for the news!  'It's cruel!' he thought; 'I ought
+never to have such a thing to settle!  It's cruel!'  He turned
+towards the house.  Some deep, simple way of deciding!  He took out
+a coin, and put it back.  If he spun it, he knew he would not abide
+by what came up!  He went into the dining-room, furthest away from
+that room whence the sounds issued.  The doctor had said there was
+a chance.  In here that chance seemed greater; the river did not
+flow, nor the leaves fall.  A fire was burning.  Soames unlocked
+the tantalus.  He hardly ever touched spirits, but now--he poured
+himself out some whisky and drank it neat, craving a faster flow of
+blood.  'That fellow Jolyon,' he thought; 'he had children already.
+He has the woman I really loved; and now a son by her!  And I--I'm
+asked to destroy my only child!  Annette can't die; it's not
+possible.  She's strong!'
+
+He was still standing sullenly at the sideboard when he heard the
+doctor's carriage, and went out to him.  He had to wait for him to
+come downstairs.
+
+"Well, doctor?"
+
+"The situation's the same.  Have you decided?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "don't operate!"
+
+"Not?  You understand--the risk's great?"
+
+In Soames' set face nothing moved but the lips.
+
+"You said there was a chance?"
+
+"A chance, yes; not much of one."
+
+"You say the baby must be born dead if you do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you still think that in any case she can't have another?"
+
+"One can't be absolutely sure, but it's most unlikely."
+
+"She's strong," said Soames; "we'll take the risk."
+
+The doctor looked at him very gravely.  "It's on your shoulders,"
+he said; "with my own wife, I couldn't."
+
+Soames' chin jerked up as if someone had hit him.
+
+"Am I of any use up there?" he asked.
+
+"No; keep away."
+
+"I shall be in my picture-gallery, then; you know where."
+
+The doctor nodded, and went upstairs.
+
+Soames continued to stand, listening.  'By this time to-morrow,' he
+thought, 'I may have her death on my hands.'  No!  it was unfair--
+monstrous, to put it that way!  Sullenness dropped on him again,
+and he went up to the gallery.  He stood at the window.  The wind
+was in the north; it was cold, clear; very blue sky, heavy ragged
+white clouds chasing across; the river blue, too, through the
+screen of goldening trees; the woods all rich with colour, glowing,
+burnished-an early autumn.  If it were his own life, would he be
+taking that risk?  'But she'd take the risk of losing me,' he
+thought, 'sooner than lose her child!  She doesn't really love me!'
+What could one expect--a girl and French?  The one thing really
+vital to them both, vital to their marriage and their futures, was
+a child!  'I've been through a lot for this,' he thought, 'I'll
+hold on--hold on.  There's a chance of keeping both--a chance!'
+One kept till things were taken--one naturally kept!  He began
+walking round the gallery.  He had made one purchase lately which
+he knew was a fortune in itself, and he halted before it--a girl
+with dull gold hair which looked like filaments of metal gazing at
+a little golden monster she was holding in her hand.  Even at this
+tortured moment he could just feel the extraordinary nature of the
+bargain he had made--admire the quality of the table, the floor,
+the chair, the girl's figure, the absorbed expression on her face,
+the dull gold filaments of her hair, the bright gold of the little
+monster.  Collecting pictures; growing richer, richer!  What use,
+if....!  He turned his back abruptly on the picture, and went to
+the window.  Some of his doves had flown up from their perches
+round the dovecot, and were stretching their wings in the wind.  In
+the clear sharp sunlight their whiteness almost flashed.  They flew
+far, making a flung-up hieroglyphic against the sky.  Annette fed
+the doves; it was pretty to see her.  They took it out of her hand;
+they knew she was matter-of-fact.  A choking sensation came into
+his throat.  She would not--could nod die!  She was too--too
+sensible; and she was strong, really strong, like her mother, in
+spite of her fair prettiness
+
+It was already growing dark when at last he opened the door, and
+stood listening.  Not a sound!  A milky twilight crept about the
+stairway and the landings below.  He had turned back when a sound
+caught his ear.  Peering down, he saw a black shape moving, and his
+heart stood still.  What was it?  Death?  The shape of Death coming
+from her door?  No!  only a maid without cap or apron.  She came to
+the foot of his flight of stairs and said breathlessly:
+
+"The doctor wants to see you, sir."
+
+He ran down.  She stood flat against the wall to let him pass, and
+said:
+
+"Oh, Sir! it's over."
+
+"Over?" said Soames, with a sort of menace; "what d'you mean?"
+
+"It's born, sir."
+
+He dashed up the four steps in front of him, and came suddenly on
+the doctor in the dim passage.  The man was wiping his brow.
+
+"Well?" he said; "quick!"
+
+"Both living; it's all right, I think."
+
+Soames stood quite still, covering his eyes.
+
+"I congratulate you," he heard the doctor say; "it was touch and
+go."
+
+Soames let fall the hand which was covering his face.
+
+"Thanks," he said; "thanks very much.  What is it?"
+
+"Daughter--luckily; a son would have killed her--the head."
+
+A daughter!
+
+"The utmost care of both," he hearts the doctor say, "and we shall
+do.  When does the mother come?"
+
+"To-night, between nine and ten, I hope."
+
+"I'll stay till then.  Do you want to see them?"
+
+"Not now," said Soames; "before you go.  I'll have dinner sent up
+to you."  And he went downstairs.
+
+Relief unspeakable, and yet--a daughter!  It seemed to him unfair.
+To have taken that risk--to have been through this agony--and what
+agony!--for a daughter!  He stood before the blazing fire of wood
+logs in the hall, touching it with his toe and trying to readjust
+himself.  'My father!' he thought.  A bitter disappointment, no
+disguising it!  One never got all one wanted in this life!  And
+there was no other--at least, if there was, it was no use!
+
+While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.
+
+"Come up at once, your father sinking fast.
+--MOTHER."
+
+He read it with a choking sensation.  One would have thought he
+couldn't feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this.
+Half-past seven, a train from Reading at nine, and madame's train,
+if she had caught it, came in at eight-forty--he would meet that,
+and go on.  He ordered the carriage, ate some dinner mechanically,
+and went upstairs.  The doctor came out to him.
+
+"They're sleeping."
+
+"I won't go in," said Soames with relief.  "My father's dying; I
+have to--go up.  Is it all right?"
+
+The doctor's face expressed a kind of doubting admiration.  'If
+they were all as unemotional' he might have been saying.
+
+"Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind.  You'll be down soon?"
+
+"To-morrow," said Soames.  "Here's the address."
+
+The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.
+
+"Good-night!" said Soames abruptly, and turned away.  He put on his
+fur coat.  Death!  It was a chilly business.  He smoked a cigarette
+in the carriage--one of his rare cigarettes.  The night was windy
+and flew on black wings; the carriage lights had to search out the
+way.  His father!  That old, old man!  A comfortless night--to die!
+
+The London train came in just as he reached the station, and Madame
+Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the lamplight,
+came towards the exit with a dressing-bag.
+
+"This all you have?" asked Soames.
+
+"But yes; I had not the time.  How is my little one?"
+
+"Doing well--both.  A girl!"
+
+"A girl!  What joy!  I had a frightful crossing!"
+
+Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing, climbed
+into the brougham.
+
+"And you, mon cher?"
+
+"My father's dying," said Soames between his teeth.  "I'm going up.
+Give my love to Annette."
+
+"Tiens!"   murmured Madame Lamotte; "quel malheur!"
+
+Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train.  'The
+French!'  he thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JAMES IS TOLD
+
+
+A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the
+air and the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the room
+he had not left since the middle of September--and James was in
+deep waters.  A little cold, passing his little strength and flying
+quickly to his lungs.  "He mustn't catch cold," the doctor had
+declared, and he had gone and caught it.  When he first felt it in
+his throat he had said to his nurse--for he had one now--"There, I
+knew how it would be, airing the room like that!"  For a whole day
+he was highly nervous about himself and went in advance of all
+precautions and remedies; drawing every breath with extreme care
+and having his temperature taken every hour.  Emily was not
+alarmed.
+
+But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: "He won't
+have his temperature taken."
+
+Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said
+softly, "How do you feel, James?" holding the thermometer to his
+lips.  James looked up at her.
+
+"What's the good of that?" he murmured huskily; "I don't want to
+know."
+
+Then she was alarmed.  He breathed with difficulty, he looked
+terribly frail, white, with faint red discolorations.  She had 'had
+trouble' with him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been James
+for nearly fifty years; she couldn't remember or imagine life
+without James--James, behind all his fussiness, his pessimism, his
+crusty shell, deeply affectionate, really kind and generous to them
+all!
+
+All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was
+in his eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his
+face which told her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope.
+His very stillness, the way he conserved every little scrap of
+energy, showed the tenacity with which he was fighting.  It touched
+her deeply; and though her face was composed and comfortable in the
+sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks when she was out of it.
+
+About tea-time on the third day--she had just changed her dress,
+keeping her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed
+everything--she saw a difference.  'It's no use; I'm tired,' was
+written plainly across that white face, and when she went up to
+him, he muttered: "Send for Soames."
+
+"Yes, James," she said comfortably; "all right--at once."  And she
+kissed his forehead.  A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it off
+she saw that his eyes looked grateful.  Much upset, and without
+hope now, she sent Soames the telegram.
+
+When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was
+still as a grave.  Warmson's broad face looked almost narrow; he
+took the fur coat with a sort of added care, saying:
+
+"Will you have a glass of wine, sir?"
+
+Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.
+
+Warmson's lips twitched.  "He's asking for you, sir;" and suddenly
+he blew his nose.  "It's a long time, sir," he said, "that I've
+been with Mr. Forsyte--a long time."
+
+Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs.
+This house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never seemed
+to him so warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last pilgrimage
+to his father's room.  It was not his taste; but in its own sub-
+stantial, lincrusta way it was the acme of comfort and security.
+And the night was so dark and windy; the grave so cold and lonely
+
+He paused outside the door.  No sound came from within.  He turned
+the handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived.  The
+light was shaded.  His mother and Winifred were sitting on the far
+side of the bed; the nurse was moving away from the near side where
+was an empty chair.  'For me!'  thought Soames.  As he moved from
+the door his mother and sister rose, but he signed with his hand
+and they sat down again.  He went up to the chair and stood looking
+at his father.  James' breathing was as if strangled; his eyes were
+closed.  And in Soames, looking on his father so worn and white and
+wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there rose a
+passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel, inexorable
+Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body, slowly
+pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who was
+dearest to him in the world.  His father, of all men, had lived a
+careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward--to
+have life slowly, painfully squeezed out of him!  And, without
+knowing that he spoke, he said: "It's cruel!"
+
+He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face towards
+the bed.  Women!  They put up with things so much.  better than
+men.  He took a step nearer to his father.  For three days James
+had not been shaved, and his lips and chin were covered with hair,
+hardly more snowy than his forehead.  It softened his face, gave it
+a queer look already not of this world.  His eyes opened.  Soames
+went quite close and bent over.  The lips moved.
+
+"Here I am, Father:"
+
+"Um--what--what news?  They never tell...."  the voice died, and a
+flood of emotion made Soames' face work so that he could not speak.
+Tell him?--yes.  But what?  He made a great effort, got his lips
+together, and said:
+
+"Good news, dear, good--Annette, a son."
+
+"Ah!"  It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,
+triumphant--like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants.  The
+eyes closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again.
+Soames recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down.  The lie he had
+told, based, as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct that
+after death James would not know the truth, had taken away all
+power of feeling for the moment.  His arm brushed against
+something.  It was his father's naked foot.  In the struggle to
+breathe he had pushed it out from under the clothes.  Soames took
+it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white, very cold.
+What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder soon!
+He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his father's
+laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose again within
+him.  A little sob, quickly smothered, came from Winifred, but his
+mother sat unmoving with her eyes fixed on James.  Soames signed to
+the nurse.
+
+"Where's the doctor?" he whispered.
+
+"He's been sent for."
+
+"Can't you do anything to ease his breathing?"
+
+"Only an injection; and he can't stand it.  The doctor said, while
+he was fighting...."
+
+"He's not fighting," whispered Soames, "he's being slowly
+smothered.  It's awful."
+
+James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying.
+Soames rose and bent over him.  James feebly moved his two hands,
+and Soames took them.
+
+"He wants to be pulled up," whispered the nurse.
+
+Soames pulled.  He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of
+anger passed over James' face.  The nurse plumped the pillows.
+Soames laid the hands down, and bending over kissed his father's
+forehead.  As he was raising himself again, James' eyes bent on him
+a look which seemed to come from the very depths of what was left
+within.  'I'm done, my boy,' it seemed to say, 'take care of them,
+take care of yourself; take care--I leave it all to you.'
+
+"Yes, Yes," Soames whispered, "yes, yes."
+
+Behind him the nurse did he knew, not what, for his father made a
+tiny movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and
+almost at once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay very
+still.  The strained expression on his face passed, a curious white
+tranquillity took its place.  His eyelids quivered, rested; the
+whole face rested; at ease.  Only by the faint puffing of his lips
+could they tell that he was breathing.  Soames sank back on his
+chair, and fell to cherishing the foot again.  He heard the nurse
+quietly crying over there by the fire; curious that she, a
+stranger, should be the only one of them who cried!  He heard the
+quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames.  One more old Forsyte
+going to his long rest--wonderful, they were!--wonderful how he had
+held on!  His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on
+the sight of James' lips.  But Soames bent sideways over the feet,
+warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder though
+they grew.  Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful sound such
+as he had never heard, was coming from his father's lips, as if an
+outraged heart had broken with a long moan.  What a strong heart,
+to have uttered that farewell!  It ceased.  Soaines looked into the
+face.  No motion; no breath!  Dead!  He kissed the brow, turned
+round and went out of the room.  He ran upstairs to the bedroom,
+his old bedroom, still kept for him; flung himself face down on the
+bed, and broke into sobs which he stilled with the pillow....
+
+A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room.  James
+lay alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with the
+gravity on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the worn
+fine gravity of old coins.
+
+Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room
+with windows thrown open to the London night.
+
+"Good-bye!" he whispered, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HIS
+
+
+He had much to see to, that night and all next day.  A telegram at
+breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last
+train back to Reading, with Emily's kiss on his forehead and in his
+ears her words:
+
+"I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy."
+
+He reached his house at midnight.  The weather had changed, was
+mild again, as though, having finished its work and sent a Forsyte
+to his last account, it could relax.  A second telegram, received
+at dinner-time, had confirmed the good news of Annette, and,
+instead of going in, Soames passed down through the garden in the
+moonlight to his houseboat.  He could sleep there quite well.
+Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in his fur coat and fell
+asleep.  He woke soon after dawn and went on deck.  He stood
+against the rail, looking west where the river swept round in a
+wide curve under the woods.  In Soames, appreciation of natural
+beauty was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense of
+grievance if it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilised,
+by his researches among landscape painting.  But dawn has power to
+fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred.  It
+was another world from the river he knew, under that remote cool
+light; a world into which man had not entered, an unreal world,
+like some strange shore sighted by discovery.  Its colour was not
+the colour of convention, was hardly colour at all; its shapes were
+brooding yet distinct; its silence stunning; it had no scent.  Why
+it should move him he could not tell, unless it were that he felt
+so alone in it, bare of all relationship and all possessions.  Into
+such a world his father might be voyaging, for all resemblance it
+had to the world he had left.  And Soames took refuge from it in
+wondering what painter could have done it justice.  The white-grey
+water was like--like the belly of a fish!  Was it possible that
+this world on which he looked was all private property, except the
+water--and even that was tapped!  No tree, no shrub, not a blade of
+grass, not a bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned.
+And once on a time all this was jungle and marsh and water, and
+weird creatures roamed and sported without human cognizance to give
+them names; rotting luxuriance had rioted where those tall, care-
+fully planted woods came down to the water, and marsh-misted reeds
+on that far side had covered all the pasture.  Well! they had got
+it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it, and stowed it in
+lawyers' offices.  And a good thing too!  But once in a way, as
+now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and whisper
+to any human who chanced to be awake: 'Out of my unowned loneliness
+you all came, into it some day you will all return.'
+
+And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world-new
+to him and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of
+its past--went down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp.  When he
+had drunk it, he took out writing materials and wrote two
+paragraphs:
+
+"On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James Forsyte,
+in his ninety-first year.  Funeral at noon on the 24th at Highgate.
+No flowers by request."
+
+"On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife of
+Soames Forsyte, of a daughter."  And underneath on the
+blottingpaper he traced the word "son."
+
+It was eight o'clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went
+across to the house.  Bushes across the river stood round and
+bright-coloured out of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue
+and straight; and his doves cooed, preening their feathers in the
+sunlight.
+
+He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh
+linen and dark clothes.
+
+Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.
+
+She looked at his clothes, said, "Don't tell me!" and pressed his
+hand.  "Annette is prettee well.  But the doctor say she can never
+have no more children.  You knew that?" Soames nodded.  "It's a
+pity.  Mais la petite est adorable.  Du cafe?"
+
+Soames got away from her as soon as he could.  She offended him--
+solid, matter-of-fact, quick, clear--French.  He could not bear her
+vowels, her 'r's'; he resented the way she had looked at him, as if
+it were his fault that Annette could never bear him a son!  His
+fault!  He even resented her cheap adoration of the daughter he had
+not yet seen.
+
+Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!
+
+One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first moment.
+On the contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from it--
+fastidious possessor that he was.  He was afraid of what Annette
+was thinking of him, author of her agonies, afraid of the look of
+the baby, afraid of showing his disappointment with the present
+and--the future.
+
+He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he
+could screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the
+door of their room.
+
+Madame Lamotte opened it.
+
+"Ah!  At last you come!  Elle vous attend!"  She passed him, and
+Soames went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his
+eyes furtive.
+
+Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there.  The baby was
+hidden away somewhere; he could not see it.  He went up to the bed,
+and with sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.
+
+"Here you are then, Soames," she said.  "I am not so bad now.  But
+I suffered terribly, terribly.  I am glad I cannot have any more.
+Oh! how I suffered!"
+
+Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of
+sympathy, absolutely would not come; the thought passed through
+him: 'An English girl wouldn't have said that!'  At this moment he
+knew with certainty that he would never be near to her in spirit
+and in truth, nor she to him.  He had collected her--that was all!
+And Jolyon's words came rushing into his mind: "I should imagine
+you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."  Well, he had
+got it out!  Had he got it in again?
+
+"We must feed you up," he said, "you'll soon be strong."
+
+"Don't you want to see baby, Soames?  She is asleep."
+
+"Of course," said Soames, "very much."
+
+He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood
+staring.  For the first moment what he saw was much what he had
+expected to see--a baby.  But as he stared and the baby breathed
+and made little sleeping movements with its tiny features, it
+seemed to assume an individual shape, grew to be like a picture, a
+thing he would know again; not repulsive, strangely bud-like and
+touching.  It had dark hair.  He touched it with his finger, he
+wanted to see its eyes.  They opened, they were dark--whether blue
+or brown he could not tell.  The eyes winked, stared, they had a
+sort of sleepy depth in them.  And suddenly his heart felt queer,
+warm, as if elated.
+
+"Ma petite fleur!" Annette said softly.
+
+"Fleur," repeated Soames: "Fleur!  we'll call her that."
+
+The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.
+
+By God!  this--this thing was his!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Indian Summer of a Forsyte, by Galsworthy
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Indian Summer of a Forsyte, by John Galsworthy
+#5 in our series by John Galsworthy
+#2 in our series of The Forsyte Saga
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+Title: Indian Summer of a Forsyte, and In Chancery, by John Galsworthy
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: April, 2001 [Etext #2594]
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE FORSYTE SAGA
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+VOLUME II
+
+Contents:
+     Indian Summer of a Forsyte
+     In Chancery
+
+
+
+TO ANDRE CHEVRILLON
+
+
+
+INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+      "And Summer's lease hath all
+                too short a date."
+                     --Shakespeare
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of
+the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the
+terrace of his house at Robin Hill.  He was waiting for the midges
+to bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon.  His
+thin brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of a
+cigar in its tapering, long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail
+had survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when to
+touch nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so
+distinguished.  His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean
+cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering sunshine
+by an old brown Panama hat.  His legs were crossed; in all his
+attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who
+every morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief.  At
+his feet lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a
+Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal
+aver-sion had changed into attachment with the years.  Close to his
+chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of Holly's dolls
+--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen over her legs and her
+doleful nose buried in a black petticoat.  She was never out of
+disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat.  Below the oak
+tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,
+beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the
+coppice, and the prospect 'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin
+Forsyte, from under this very tree, had stared five years ago when
+he drove down with Irene to look at the house.  Old Jolyon had
+heard of his brother's exploit--that drive which had become quite
+celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.' Swithin! And the fellow had gone
+and died, last November, at the age of only seventy-nine, renewing
+the doubt whether Forsytes could live for ever, which had first
+arisen when Aunt Ann passed away.  Died! and left only Jolyon and
+James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester, Susan!  And
+old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except when I
+get that pain.'
+
+His memory went searching.  He had not felt his age since he had
+bought his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it
+here at Robin Hill over three years ago.  It was as if he had been
+getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son
+and his grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second
+marriage, Jolly and Holly; living down here out of the racket of
+London and the cackle of Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a
+delicious atmosphere of no work and all play, with plenty of
+occupation in the perfecting and mellowing of the house and its
+twenty acres, and in ministering to the whims of Holly and Jolly.
+All the knots and crankiness, which had gathered in his heart
+during that long and tragic business of June, Soames, Irene his
+wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.  Even June
+had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in Spain
+she was taking now with her father and her stepmother.  Curiously
+perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank,
+because his son was not there.  Jo was never anything but a comfort
+and a pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women,
+somehow--even the best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of
+course one admired them.
+
+Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first
+elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had
+sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou'-
+west, too--a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let
+the sun fall on his chin and cheek.  Somehow, to-day, he wanted
+company wanted a pretty face to look at.  People treated the old as
+if they wanted nothing.  And with the un-Forsytean philosophy which
+ever intruded on his soul, he thought: 'One's never had enough'
+
+With a foot in the grave one'll want something, I shouldn't be
+surprised!'  Down here--away from the exigencies of affairs--his
+grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain,
+to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
+sesame,' to him day and night.  And sesame had opened--how much,
+perhaps, he did not know.  He had always been responsive to what
+they had begun to call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously
+responsive, though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset
+a sunset and a view a view, however deeply they might move him.
+But nowadays Nature actually made him ache, he appreciated it so.
+Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening days, with Holly's
+hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking studiously for
+what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses open,
+fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and
+saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and
+glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field;
+listening to the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows
+chewing the cud, flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of
+these fine days he ached a little from sheer love of it all,
+feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to
+enjoy it.  The thought that some day perhaps not ten years hence,
+perhaps not five--all this world would be taken away from him,
+before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in
+the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon.  If anything
+came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not Robin
+Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of
+those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had
+increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had
+worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off,
+leaving him reverent before three things alone--beauty, upright
+conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now
+was beauty.  He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could
+still read The Tines, but he was liable at any moment to put it
+down if he heard a blackbird sing.  Upright conduct, property--
+somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never
+tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get
+enough of them.  Staring into the stilly radiance of the early
+evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a
+thought came to him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,'
+which he had recently heard at Covent Garden.  A beautiful opera,
+not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps
+even more lovely; some-thing classical and of the Golden Age about
+it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old
+days'--highest praise he could bestow.  The yearning of Orpheus for
+the beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in
+life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang and throbbed
+through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of
+the world that evening.  And with the tip of his cork-soled,
+elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog
+Balthasar, caus-ing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for
+though he was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of
+the fact.  When he had finished, he rubbed the place he had been
+scratching against his master's calf, and settled down again with
+his chin over the instep of the disturbing boot.  And into old
+Jolyon's mind came a sudden recollection--a face he had seen at
+that opera three weeks ago--Irene, the wife of his precious nephew
+Soames, that man of property! Though he had not met her since the
+day of  the 'At Home' in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which
+celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred engagement to young
+Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had always admired
+her--a very pretty creature.  After the death of young Bosinney,
+whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard that
+she had left Soames at once.  Goodness only knew what she had been
+doing since.  That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in
+front, had been literally the only reminder these three years that
+she was still alive.  No one ever spoke of her.  And yet Jo had
+told him some-thing once--something which had upset him completely.
+The boy had got it from George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen
+Bosinney in the fog the day he was run over--something which
+explained the young fellow's distress--an act of Soames towards his
+wife--a shocking act.  Jo had seen her, too, that afternoon, after
+the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his description had
+always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he had called
+her.  And next day June had gone there  bottled up her feelings and
+gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her mistress
+had slipped out in the night and vanished.  A tragic business
+altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to
+lay hands on her again.  And he was living at Brighton, and
+journeying up and down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For
+when he once took a dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old
+Jolyon never got over it.  He remembered still the sense of relief
+with which he had heard the news of Irene's disappearance.  It had
+been shocking to think of her a prisoner in that house to which she
+must have wandered back, when Jo saw her, wandered back for a
+moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after seeing that news,
+'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street.  Her face had struck
+him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had remem-
+bered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it.  A
+young woman still--twenty-eight perhaps.  Ah, well! Very likely she
+had another lover by now.  But at this subversive thought--for
+married women should never love: once, even, had been too much--his
+instep rose, and with it the dog Balthasar's head.  The sagacious
+animal stood up and looked into old Jolyon's face.  'Walk?' he
+seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered: "Come on, old chap!"
+
+Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of
+buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery.  This feature,
+where very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below
+the level of the lawn so that it might come up again on the level
+of the other lawn and give the impression of irregularity, so
+important in horticulture.  Its rocks and earth were beloved of the
+dog Balthasar, who sometimes found a mole there.  Old Jolyon made a
+point of passing through it because, though it was not beautiful,
+he intended that it should be, some day, and he would think: 'I
+must get Varr to come down and look at it; he's better than Beech.'
+For plants, like houses and human complaints, required the best
+expert consideration.  It was inhabited by snails, and if
+accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell
+them the story of the little boy who said: 'Have plummers got
+leggers, Mother?  'No, sonny.'  'Then darned if I haven't been and
+swallowed a snileybob.'  And when they skipped and clutched his
+hand, thinking of the snileybob going down the little boy's 'red
+lane,' his, eyes would twinkle.  Emerging from the fernery, he
+opened the wicket gate, which just there led into the first field,
+a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick walls, the
+vegetable garden had been carved.  Old Jolyon avoided this, which
+did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.
+Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the
+gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day.
+Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily
+opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when
+'his little sweet' had got over the upset which had followed on her
+eating a tomato at lunch--her little arrangements were very
+delicate.  Now that Jolly had gone to school--his first term--Holly
+was with him nearly all day long, and he missed her badly.  He felt
+that pain too, which often bothered him now, a little dragging at
+his left side.  He looked back up the hill.  Really, poor young
+Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house; he would
+have done very well for himself if he had lived!  And where was he
+now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of
+his tragic love affair.  Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused
+in the general?  Who could say?  That dog was getting his legs
+muddy!  And he moved towards the coppice.  There had been the most
+delightful lot of bluebells, and--he knew where some still lingered
+like little patches of sky fallen irk between the trees, away out
+of the sun.  He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there
+installed, and pursued a path into the thick of the saplings,
+making for one of the bluebell plots.  Balthasar, preceding him
+once more, uttered a low growl.  Old Jolyon stirred him with his
+foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where there was no room
+to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of his woolly
+back.  Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's stivered
+hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old Jolyon
+also felt something move along his spine.  And then the path
+turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting.
+Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
+trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned.
+Powers above!  The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he
+had just been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things
+blurred, as if a spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight
+perhaps on her violet-grey frock! And then she rose and stood
+smiling, her head a little to one side.  Old Jolyon thought: 'How
+pretty she is!' She did not speak, neither did he; and he realized
+why with a certain admiration.  She was here no doubt because of
+some memory, and did not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar
+explanation.
+
+"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet.
+Come here, you!"
+
+But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand
+down and stroked his head.  Old Jolyon said quickly:
+
+"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."
+
+"Oh, yes! I did."
+
+He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you
+think one could miss seeing you?'
+
+"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly.  "I'm alone; I drove
+up for the opera.  The Ravogli's good.  Have you seen the cow-
+houses?"
+
+In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like
+emotion he moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and
+she moved beside him.  Her figure swayed faintly, like the best
+kind of French figures; her dress, too, was a sort of French grey.
+He noticed two or three silver threads in her amber-coloured hair,
+strange hair with those dark eyes of hers, and that creamy-pale
+face.  A sudden sidelong look from the velvety brown eyes disturbed
+him.  It seemed to come from deep and far, from another world
+almost, or at all events from some one not living very much in
+this.  And he said mechanically
+
+"Where are you living now?"
+
+"I have a little flat in Chelsea."
+
+He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
+anything; but the perverse word came out:
+
+"Alone?"
+
+She nodded.  It was a relief to know that.  And it came into his
+mind that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of
+this coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.
+
+"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk.  This one's
+a pretty creature.  Woa, Myrtle!"
+
+The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own,
+was standing absolutely still, not having long been milked.  She
+looked round at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild,
+cynical eyes, and from her grey lips a little dribble of saliva
+threaded its way towards the straw.  The scent of hay and vanilla
+and ammonia rose in the dim light of the cool cow-house; and old
+Jolyon said:
+
+"You must come up and have some dinner with me.  I'll send you home
+in the carriage."
+
+He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt,
+with her memories.  But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a
+charming figure, beauty!  He had been alone all the afternoon.
+Perhaps his eyes were wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle
+Jolyon.  I should like to."
+
+He rubbed his hands, and said:
+
+"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar,
+they ascended through the field.  The sun was almost level in their
+faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but
+little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like
+fineness--the special look of life unshared with others.  "I'll
+take her in by the terrace, "he thought: "I won't make a common
+visitor of her."
+
+"What do you do all day?" he said.
+
+"Teach music; I have another interest, too."
+
+"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing,
+and smoothing its black petticoat.  "Nothing like it, is there?  I
+don't do any now.  I'm getting on.  What interest is that?"
+
+"Trying to help women who've come to grief."  Old Jolyon did not
+quite understand.  "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a
+shock that she meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he
+had used that expression.  Assisting the Magdalenes of London!
+What a weird and terrifying interest!  And, curiosity overcoming
+his natural shrinking, he asked:
+
+"Why? What do you do for them?"
+
+"Not much.  I've no money to spare.  I can only give sympathy and
+food sometimes."
+
+Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse.  He said hastily:
+"How d'you get hold of them?"
+
+"I go to a hospital."
+
+"A hospital! Phew!"
+
+"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
+beauty."
+
+Old Jolyon straightened the doll.  "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha!
+Yes! A sad business!" and he moved towards the house.  Through a
+French window, under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her
+into the room where he was wont to study 'The Times' and the sheets
+of an agricultural magazine, with huge illustrations of mangold
+wurzels, and the like, which provided Holly with material for her
+paint brush.
+
+"Dinner's in half an hour.  You'd like to wash your hands!  I'll
+take you to June's room."
+
+He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last
+visited this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps-
+-he did not know, could not say!  All that was dark, and he wished
+to leave it so.  But what changes!  And in the hall he said:
+
+"My boy Jo's a painter, you know.  He's got a lot of taste.  It
+isn't mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."
+
+She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and
+music room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great
+skylight.  Old Jolyon had an odd impression of her.  Was she trying
+to conjure somebody from the shades of that space where the
+colouring was all pearl-grey and silver? He would have had gold
+himself; more lively and solid.  But Jo had French tastes, and it
+had come out shadowy like that, with an effect as of the fume of
+cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and there by a
+little blaze of blue or crimson colour.  It was not his dream!
+Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces
+of still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity
+was precious.  And now where were they?  Sold for a song!  That
+something which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times
+had warned him against the struggle to retain them.  But in his
+study he still had 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'
+
+He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his
+side.
+
+"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements.  I've
+had them tiled.  The nurseries are along there.  And this is Jo's
+and his wife's.  They all communicate.  But you remember, I
+expect."
+
+Irene nodded.  They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large
+room with a small bed, and several windows.
+
+"This is mine," he said.  The walls were covered with the
+photographs of children and watercolour sketches, and he added
+doubtfully:
+
+"These are Jo's.  The view's first-rate.  You can see the Grand
+Stand at Epsom in clear weather."
+
+The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a
+luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous
+day.  Few houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened,
+away to a loom of downs.
+
+"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be
+when we're all gone.  Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet
+here in the mornings.  I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."
+
+Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its
+mournful look.  'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought.  'A
+pretty face, but sad!'  And taking up his can of hot water he went
+out into the gallery.
+
+"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting
+the can down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the
+door behind her he went back to his own room.  Brushing his hair
+with his great ebony brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de
+Cologne, he mused.  She had come so strangely--a sort of visit-
+ation; mysterious, even romantic, as if his desire for company, for
+beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was which fulfilled that
+sort of thing.  And before the mirror he straightened his still
+upright figure, passed the brushes over his great white moustache,
+touched up his eyebrows with eau de Cologne, and rang the bell.
+
+"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me.
+Let cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and
+pair at half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night.  Is Miss
+Holly asleep?"
+
+The maid thought not.  And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery,
+stole on tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose
+hinges he kept specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the
+evenings without being heard.
+
+But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that
+type which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they
+had completed her.  Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on
+her face was perfect peace--her little arrangements were evidently
+all right again.  And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room,
+stood adoring her!  It was so charming, solemn, and loving--that
+little face.  He had more than his share of the blessed capacity of
+living again in the young.  They were to him his future life--all
+of a future life that his fundamental pagan sanity perhaps
+admitted.  There she was with everything before her, and his
+blood--some of it--in her tiny veins.  There she was, his little
+companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that
+she knew nothing but love.  His heart swelled, and he went out,
+stilling the sound of his patent-leather boots.  In the corridor an
+eccentric notion attacked him: To think that children should come
+to that which Irene had told him she was helping!  Women who were
+all, once, little things like this one sleeping there!  'I must
+give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't bear to think of them!'  They
+had never borne reflecting on, those poor outcasts; wounding too
+deeply the core of true refinement hidden under layers of
+conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously the
+deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even
+now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society
+of a pretty woman.  And he went downstairs, through the swinging
+doors, to the back regions.  There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock
+worth at least two pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better
+than any Johan-nisberg that ever went down throat; a wine of
+perfect bouquet, sweet as a nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a
+bottle out, handling it like a baby, and holding it level to the
+light, to look.  Enshrined in its coat of dust, that mellow
+coloured, slender--necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.  Three
+years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to be in
+prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God
+he had kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it.  She
+would appreciate this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen.  He wiped
+the bottle, drew the cork with his own hands, put his nose down,
+inhaled its perfume, and went back to the music room.
+
+Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a
+lace scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was
+visible, and the pallor of her neck.  In her grey frock she made a
+pretty picture for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.
+
+He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went.  The room, which had
+been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held
+now but a little round table.  In his present solitude the big
+dining-table oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed
+till his son came back.  Here in the company of two really good
+copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone.  It was the
+only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather.  He had
+never been a large eater, like that great chap Swithin, or Sylvanus
+Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies of past times; and
+to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him but a
+sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might
+come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar.  But
+this evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her
+across the little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland,
+telling her stories of his travels there, and other experiences
+which he could no longer recount to his son and grand-daughter
+because they knew them.  This fresh audience was precious to him;
+he had never become one of those old men who ramble round and round
+the fields of reminiscence.  Himself quickly fatigued by the
+insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others, and his
+natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in his
+relations with a woman.  He would have liked to draw her out, but
+though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he
+told her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which
+constituted half her fascination.  He could not bear women who
+threw their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-
+mouthed women who laid down the law and knew more than you did.
+There was only one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm;
+and the quieter it was, the more he liked it.  And this one had
+charm, shadowy as afternoon sunlight on those Italian hills and
+valleys he had loved.  The feeling, too, that she was, as it were,
+apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to himself, a strangely
+desirable companion.  When a man is very old and quite out of the
+running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of youth, for
+he would still be first in the heart of beauty.  And he drank his
+hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young.  But the dog
+Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the
+interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish
+glasses full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.
+
+The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room.
+And, cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:
+
+"Play me some Chopin."
+
+By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall
+know the texture of men's souls.  Old Jolyon could not bear--a
+strong cigar or Wagner's music.  He loved Beethoven and Mozart,
+Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the
+operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by
+Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli.  In
+yielding to these tastes he had been conscious of divergence from
+the standard of the Golden Age.  Their poetry was not that of
+Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and Titian; Mozart and
+Beethoven.  It was, as it were, behind a veil; their poetry hit no
+one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and turned
+and twisted, and melted up the heart.  And, never certain that this
+was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the
+pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.
+
+Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
+pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see
+her, crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar.  She sat a few
+moments with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind
+for what to give him.  Then she began and within old Jolyon there
+arose a sorrowful pleasure, not quite like anything else in the
+world.  He fell slowly into a trance, interrupted only by the
+movements of taking the cigar out of his mouth at long intervals,
+and replacing it.  She was there, and the hock within him, and the
+scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of sunshine lingering
+into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and bluish trees
+above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of lavender
+where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy, with
+dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and
+through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a
+cow's horn.  He opened his eyes.  Beautiful piece; she played well-
+-the touch of an angel!  And he closed them again.  He felt mirac-
+ulously sad and happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in
+full honey flower.  Not live one's own life again, but just stand
+there and bask in the smile of a woman's eyes, and enjoy the
+bouquet!  And he jerked his hand; the dog Balthasar had reached up
+and licked it.
+
+"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"
+
+She began to play again.  This time the resemblance between her and
+'Chopin' struck him.  The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in
+her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft
+darkness of her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a
+golden moon.  Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in
+that music.  A long blue spiral from his cigar ascended and
+dispersed.  'So we go out!' he thought.  'No more beauty! Nothing?'
+
+Again Irene stopped.
+
+"Would you like some Gluck?  He used to write his music in a sunlit
+garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."
+
+"Ah!; yes.  Let's have 'Orfeo.'" Round about him now were fields of
+gold and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight,
+bright birds flying to and fro.  All was summer.  Lingering waves
+of sweetness and regret flooded his soul.  Some cigar ash dropped,
+and taking out a silk handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a
+mingled scent as of snuff and eau de Cologne.  'Ah!' he thought,
+'Indian summer--that's all!' and he said: "You haven't played me
+'Che faro.'"
+
+She did not answer; did not move.  He was conscious of something--
+some strange upset.  Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a
+pang of remorse shot through him.  What a clumsy chap!  Like
+Orpheus, she of course--she too was looking for her lost one in the
+hall of memory!  And disturbed to the heart, he got up from his
+chair.  She had gone to the great window at the far end.  Gingerly
+he followed.  Her hands were folded over her breast; he could just
+see her cheek, very white.  And, quite emotionalized, he said:
+
+"There, there, my love!"  The words had escaped him mechanically,
+for they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their
+effect was instantaneously distressing.  She raised her arms,
+covered her face with them, and wept.
+
+Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age.  The
+passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike
+the control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had
+never before broken down in the presence of another being.
+
+"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out
+reverently, touched her.  She turned, and leaned the arms which
+covered her face against him.  Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping
+one thin hand on her shoulder.  Let her cry her heart out--it would
+do her good.
+
+And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine
+them.
+
+The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the
+last of daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the
+lamp within; there was a scent of new-mown grass.  With the wisdom
+of a long life old Jolyon did not speak.  Even grief sobbed itself
+out in time; only Time was good for sorrow--Time who saw the
+passing of each mood, each emotion in turn; Time the layer-to-rest.
+There came into his mind the words: 'As panteth the hart after
+cooling streams'--but they were of no use to him.  Then, conscious
+of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her eyes.  He put his
+chin forward, pressed his moustache against her forehead, and felt
+her shake with a quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which
+shakes itself free of raindrops.  She put his hand to her lips, as
+if saying: "All over now!  Forgive me!"
+
+The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to
+where she had been so upset.  And the dog Balthasar, following,
+laid the bone of one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.
+
+Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of
+nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet
+to cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and
+Chelsea, turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands,
+whose skin, faintly freckled, had such an aged look.
+
+"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds.
+It's very old.  That dog leaves his bones all over the place.  This
+old 'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the
+Marquis, came to grief.  But you don't remember.  Here's a nice
+piece of Chelsea.  Now, what would you say this was?"  And he was
+comforted, feeling that, with her taste, she was taking a real
+interest in these things; for, after all, nothing better composes
+the nerves than a doubtful piece of china.
+
+When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said
+
+"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you
+these by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing.
+This dog seems to have taken a fancy to you."
+
+For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his
+side against her leg.  Going out under the porch with her, he said:
+
+"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter.  Take this for your
+protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand.
+He saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh Uncle
+Jolyon!" and a real throb of pleasure went through him.  That meant
+one or two poor creatures helped a little, and it meant that she
+would come again.  He put his hand in at the window and grasped
+hers once more.  The carriage rolled away.  He stood looking at the
+moon and the shadows of the trees, and thought: 'A sweet night!
+She ......!'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny.  Old Jolyon
+walked and talked with Holly.  At first he felt taller and full of
+a new vigour; then he felt restless.  Almost every afternoon they
+would enter the coppice, and walk as far as the log.  'Well, she's
+not there!' he would think, 'of course not!'  And he would feel a
+little shorter, and drag his feet walking up the hill home, with
+his hand clapped to his left side.  Now and then the thought would
+move in him: 'Did she come--or did I dream it?' and he would stare
+at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him.  Of course she
+would not come again!  He opened the letters from Spain with less
+excitement.  They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
+that he could bear it.  Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes
+and looked at where she had sat.  She was not there, so he
+unscrewed his eyes again.
+
+On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some
+boots.'  He ordered Beacon, and set out.  Passing from Putney
+towards Hyde Park he reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and
+see her.'  And he called out: "Just drive me to where you took that
+lady the other night."  The coachman turned his broad red face, and
+his juicy lips answered: "The lady in grey, sir?"
+
+"Yes, the lady in grey."  What other ladies were there!  Stodgy
+chap!
+
+The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
+standing a little back from the river.  With a practised eye old
+Jolyon saw that they were cheap.  'I should think about sixty pound
+a year,'  he mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board.  The
+name 'Forsyte' was not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C'
+were the words: 'Mrs. Irene Heron.'  Ah! She had taken her maiden
+name again!  And somehow this pleased him.  He went upstairs
+slowly, feeling his side a little.  He stood a moment, before
+ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and fluttering there.  She
+would not be in!  And then Boots!  The thought was black.  What did
+he want with boots at his age? He could not wear out all those he
+had.
+
+"Your mistress at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
+
+"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"
+
+Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one
+would say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were
+drawn.  It held a cottage piano and little else save a vague
+fragrance and good taste.  'He stood in the middle, with his top
+hat in his hand, and thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!'
+There was a mirror above the fireplace, and he saw himself
+reflected.  An old-looking chap!  He heard a rustle, and turned
+round.  She was so close that his moustache almost brushed her
+forehead, just under her hair.
+
+"I was driving up," he said.  "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask
+you how you got up the other night."
+
+And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved.  She was really
+glad to see him, perhaps.
+
+"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the
+Park?"
+
+But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned.  The Park!
+James and Emily!  Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his
+precious family would be there very likely, prancing up and down.
+And they would go and wag their tongues about having seen him with
+her, afterwards.  Better not!  He did not wish to revive the echoes
+of the past on Forsyte 'Change.'  He removed a white hair from the
+lapel of his closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand
+over his cheeks, moustache, and square chin.  It felt very hollow
+there under the cheekbones.  He had not been eating much lately--he
+had better get that little whippersnapper who attended Holly to
+give him a tonic.  But she had come back and when they were in the
+carriage, he said:
+
+"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added
+with a twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been
+in the secret of his thoughts.
+
+Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and
+strolled towards the water.
+
+"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not
+sorry."
+
+She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle
+Jolyon?"
+
+He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"
+
+"And have you?"
+
+"I?  I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay."  And
+perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the
+beautiful.
+
+She drew a deep breath.  "I never regretted--I couldn't.  Did you
+ever love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him.  Had he?  He
+did not seem to remember that he ever had.  But he did not like to
+say this to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose
+life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.  And he
+thought: 'If I had met you when I was young I--I might have made a
+fool of myself, perhaps.'  And a longing to escape in generalities
+beset him.
+
+"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often.  It was the
+Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I
+dare say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."
+
+"Phil adored them."
+
+Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all
+round a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like
+this.  She wanted to talk about her lover!  Well!  If it was any
+pleasure to her!  And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor
+in him, I fancy."
+
+"Yes.  He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted
+way the Greeks gave themselves to art."
+
+Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
+symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes
+of his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?
+
+"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon."
+
+Old Jolyon looked round at her.  Was she chaffing him?  No, her
+eyes were soft as velvet.  Was she flattering him?  But if so, why?
+There was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.
+
+"Phil thought so.  He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I
+admire him.'"
+
+Ah! There it was again.  Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him!
+And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half
+grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between herself
+and him.
+
+"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured.  "It's hot; I
+feel the heat nowadays.  Let's sit down."
+
+They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves
+covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon.  A pleasure
+to sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him.
+And the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:
+
+"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw.  He'd be at his
+best with you.  His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had
+stiffed the word 'fangled.'
+
+"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty."  Old
+Jolyon thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle:
+"Well, I have, or I shouldn't be sitting here with you."  She was
+fascinating when she smiled with her eyes, like that!
+
+"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old.  Phil
+had real insight."
+
+He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of
+a longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was
+precious to hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which
+quite true!--had never grown old.  Was that because--unlike her and
+her dead lover, he had never loved to desperation, had always kept
+his balance, his sense of symmetry.  Well! It had left him power,
+at eighty-four, to admire beauty.  And he thought, 'If I were a
+painter or a sculptor!  But I'm an old chap.  Make hay while the
+sun shines.'
+
+A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at
+the edge of the shadow from their tree.  The sunlight fell cruelly
+on their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces.  "We're an ugly lot!"
+said old Jolyon suddenly.  "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs
+over that."
+
+"Love triumphs over everything!"
+
+"The young think so," he muttered.
+
+"Love has no age, no limit; and no death."
+
+With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so
+large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life!  But
+this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he
+said: "Well, if it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George!
+it's got a lot to put up with."
+
+Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff.  The
+great clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got
+a rush of blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had
+been.
+
+She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she
+murmured:
+
+"It's strange enough that I'm alive."
+
+Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.
+
+"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."
+
+"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a
+second it was--Phil."
+
+Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble.  She put her hand over them, took
+it away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the
+Embankment; a woman caught me by the dress.  She told me about
+herself.  When one knows that others suffer, one's ashamed."
+
+"One of those?"
+
+She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one
+who has never known a struggle with desperation.  Almost against
+his will he muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"
+
+"I didn't care whether I lived or died.  When you're like that,
+Fate ceases to want to kill you.  She took care of me three days--
+she never left me.  I had no money.  That's why I do what I can for
+them, now."
+
+But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!'  What fate could compare
+with that?  Every other was involved in it.
+
+"I wish you had come to me," he said.  "Why didn't you?"  But Irene
+did not answer.
+
+"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose?  Or was it June who kept
+you away?  How are you getting on now?"  His eyes involuntarily
+swept her body.  Perhaps even now she was--!  And yet she wasn't
+thin--not really!
+
+"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough."  The answer
+did not reassure him; he had lost confidence.  And that fellow
+Soames!  But his sense of justice stifled condemnation.  No, she
+would certainly have died rather than take another penny from him.
+Soft as she looked, there must be strength in her somewhere--
+strength and fidelity.  But what business had young Bosinney to
+have got run over and left her stranded like this!
+
+"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want,
+or I shall be quite cut up."  And putting on his hat, he rose.
+"Let's go and get some tea.  I told that lazy chap to put the
+horses up for an hour, and come for me at your place.  We'll take a
+cab presently; I can't walk as I used to."
+
+He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the
+sound of her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of
+a charming form moving beside him.  He enjoyed their tea at
+Ruffel's in the High Street, and came out thence with a great box
+of chocolates swung on his little finger.  He enjoyed the drive
+back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his cigar.  She had promised
+to come down next Sunday and play to him again, and already in
+thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her to carry
+back to town.  It was a pleasure to give her a little pleasure, if
+it WERE pleasure from an old chap like him!  The carriage was
+already there when they arrived.  Just like that fellow, who was
+always late when he was wanted!  Old Jolyon went in for a minute to
+say good-bye.  The little dark hall of the fiat was impregnated
+with a disagreeable odour of patchouli, and on a bench against the
+wall--its only furniture--he saw a figure sitting.  He heard Irene
+say softly: "Just one minute."  In the little drawing-room when the
+door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of your protegees?"
+
+"Yes.  Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."
+
+He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had
+frightened so many in its time.  The idea of her thus actually in
+contact with this outcast, grieved and frightened him.  What could
+she do for them?  Nothing.  Only soil and make trouble for herself,
+perhaps.  And he said: "Take care, my dear!  The world puts the
+worst construction on everything."
+
+"I know that."
+
+He was abashed by her quiet smile.  "Well then--Sunday," he
+murmured: "Good-bye."
+
+She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.
+
+"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself."  And he went
+out, not looking towards the figure on the bench.  He drove home by
+way of Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and
+tell them to send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy.  She
+must want picking-up sometimes!  Only in Richmond Park did he
+remember that he had gone up to order himself some boots, and was
+surprised that he could have had so paltry an idea.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had
+never pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy
+hours elapsing before Sunday came.  The spirit of the future, with
+the charm of the unknown, put up her lips instead.  Old Jolyon was
+not restless now, and paid no visits to the log, because she was
+coming to lunch.  There is wonderful finality about a meal; it
+removes a world of doubts, for no one misses meals except for
+reasons beyond control.  He played many games with Holly on the
+lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to be ready to
+bowl to Jolly in the holidays.  For she was not a Forsyte, but
+Jolly was--and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
+reached the age of eighty-five.  The dog Balthasar, in attendance,
+lay on the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded,
+till his face was like the harvest moon.  And because the time was
+getting shorter, each day was longer and more golden than the last.
+On Friday night he took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and
+though it was not the liver side, there is no remedy like that.
+Anyone telling him that he had found a new excitement in life and
+that excitement was not good for him, would have been met by one of
+those steady and rather defiant looks of his deep-set iron-grey
+eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own business best.'  He
+always had and always would.
+
+On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to
+church, he visited the strawberry beds.  There, accompanied by the
+dog Balthasar, he examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in
+finding at least two dozen berries which were really ripe.
+Stooping was not good for him, and he became very dizzy and red in
+the forehead.  Having placed the strawberries in a dish on the
+dining-table, he washed his hands and bathed his forehead with eau
+de Cologne.  There, before the mirror, it occurred to him that he
+was thinner.  What a 'threadpaper' he had been when he was young!
+It was nice to be slim--he could not bear a fat chap; and yet
+perhaps his cheeks were too thin!  She was to arrive by train at
+half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road past Drage's
+farm at the far end of the coppice.  And, having looked into June's
+room to see that there was hot water ready, he set forth to meet
+her, leisurely, for his heart was beating.  The air smelled sweet,
+larks sang, and the Grand Stand at Epsom was visible.  A perfect
+day!  On just such a one, no doubt, six years ago, Soames had
+brought young Bosinney down with him to look at the site before
+they began to build.  It was Bosinney who had pitched on the exact
+spot for the house--as June had often told him.  In these days he
+was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit were
+really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of
+seeing--her.  Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart, to
+whom she had given her whole self with rapture!  At his age one
+could not, of course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him
+a queer vague aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal
+jealousy; and a feeling, too, more generous, of pity for that love
+so early lost.  All over in a few poor months!  Well, well!  He
+looked at his watch before entering the coppice--only a quarter
+past, twenty-five minutes to wait!  And then, turning the corner of
+the path, he saw her exactly where he had seen her the first time,
+on the log; and realised that she must have come by the earlier
+train to sit there alone for a couple of hours at least.  Two hours
+of her society missed!  What memory could make that log so dear to
+her?  His face showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:
+
+"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."
+
+"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like.  You're looking a
+little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."
+
+That she should have to give lessons worried him.  Lessons to a
+parcel of young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.
+
+"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.
+
+"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."
+
+Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.
+
+"They love music, and they're very kind."
+
+"They had better be, by George!"  He took her arm--his side always
+hurt him a little going uphill--and said:
+
+"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups?  They came like
+that in a night."
+
+Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the
+flowers and the honey.  "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let
+them turn the cows in yet."  Then, remembering that she had come to
+talk about Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the
+stables:
+
+"I expect be wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of
+time, if I remember."
+
+But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he
+knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of her
+dead lover.
+
+"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph,
+"is my little sweet.  She'll be back from Church directly.  There's
+something about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did
+not seem to him peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of
+saying: "There's something about you which reminds me a little of
+her."  Ah! And here she was!
+
+Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose
+digestion had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of
+Strasbourg, came rushing towards them from under the oak tree.  She
+stopped about a dozen yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that
+this was all she had in her mind.  Old Jolyon who knew better,
+said:
+
+"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."
+
+Holly raised herself and looked up.  He watched the two of them
+with a twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry,
+passing into a shy smile too, and then to something deeper.  She
+had a sense of beauty, that child--knew what was what!  He enjoyed
+the sight of the kiss between them.
+
+"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce.  Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"
+
+For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part
+of the service connected with this world absorbed what interest in
+church remained to him.  Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery
+hand clad in a black kid glove--she had been in the best families--
+and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask:
+"Are you well-brrred?" Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything
+unpleasing to her--a not uncommon occurrence he would say to them:
+"The little Tayleurs never did that--they were such well-brrred
+little children."  Jolly hated the little Tayleurs; Holly wondered
+dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them.  'A thin rum
+little soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle Beauce.
+
+Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had
+picked in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another
+bottle of the Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic
+spirituality, and a conviction that he would have a touch of eczema
+to-morrow.
+
+After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee.
+It was no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew
+to write her Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been
+endangered in the past by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily
+in warning to the children to eat slowly and digest what they had
+eaten.  At the foot of the bank, on a carriage rug, Holly and the
+dog Balthasar teased and loved each other, and in the shade old
+Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar luxuriously savoured,
+gazed at Irene sitting in the swing.  A light, vaguely swaying,
+grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon it, lips
+just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped.  She
+looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him!  The
+selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could
+still feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what
+he wanted, though much, was not quite all that mattered.
+
+"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it
+dull.  But it's a pleasure to see you.  My little sweet's is the
+only face which gives me any pleasure, except yours."
+
+>From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be
+appreciated, and this reassured him.  "That's not humbug," he said.
+"I never told a woman I admired her when I didn't.  In fact I
+don't know when I've told a woman I admired her, except my wife in
+the old days; and wives are funny."  He was silent, but resumed
+abruptly:
+
+"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and
+there we were."  Her face looked  mysteriously troubled, and,
+afraid that he had said something painful, he hurried on: "When my
+little sweet marries, I hope she'll find someone who knows what
+women feel.  I shan't be here to see it, but there's too much
+topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her to pitch up against
+that."  And, aware that he had made bad worse, he added: "That dog
+will scratch."
+
+A silence followed.  Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature
+whose life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made
+for love?  Some day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find
+another mate--not so disorderly as that young fellow who had got
+himself run over.  Ah! but her husband?
+
+"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.  Her face had closed up  suddenly.  For all her
+softness there was something irreconcilable about her.  And a
+glimpse of light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies
+strayed into a brain which, belonging to early Victorian civil-
+isation--so much older than this of his old age--had never thought
+about such primitive things.
+
+"That's a comfort," he said.  "You can see the Grand Stand to-day.
+Shall we take a turn round?"
+
+Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls
+peach trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the
+stables, the vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the
+rosery, the summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen
+garden to see the tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of
+their pods with her finger, and lick up from the palm of her little
+brown hand.  Many delightful things he showed her, while Holly and
+the dog Balthasar danced ahead, or came to them at intervals for
+attention.  It was one of the happiest afternoons he had ever
+spent, but it tired him and he was glad to sit down in the music
+room and let her give him tea.  A special little friend of Holly's
+had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.  And the
+two sported in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and
+up in the gallery.  Old Jolyon begged for Chopin.  She played
+studies, mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near,
+stood at the foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent
+forward, listening.  Old Jolyon watched.
+
+"Let's see you dance, you two!"
+
+Shyly, with a false start, they began.  Bobbing and circling,
+earnest, not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the
+strains of that waltz.  He watched them and the face of her who was
+playing turned smiling towards those little dancers thinking:
+
+'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'
+
+A voice said:
+
+"Hollee! Mais enfin--quest-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!
+Viens, donc!"
+
+But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would
+save them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'
+
+"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle.  It's all my doing.
+Trot along, chicks, and have your tea."
+
+And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took
+every meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:
+
+"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones
+among your pupils?"
+
+"Yes, three--two of them darlings."
+
+"Pretty?"
+
+"Lovely!"
+
+Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very
+young.  "My little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be
+a musician some day.  You wouldn't give me your opinion of her
+playing, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her
+lessons."  The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him;
+yet it would mean that he would see her regularly.  She left the
+piano and came over to his chair.
+
+"I would like, very much; but there is--June.  When are they coming
+back?"
+
+Old Jolyon frowned.  "Not till the middle of next month.  What does
+that matter?"
+
+"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
+Jolyon."
+
+Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.
+
+But as if answering, Irene shook her head.  "You know she couldn't;
+one doesn't forget."
+
+Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed
+finality:
+
+"Well, we shall see."
+
+He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred
+little things, till the carriage came round to take her home.  And
+when she had gone he went back to his chair, and sat there
+smoothing his face and chin, dreaming over the day.
+
+That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of
+paper.  He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and
+stood under the masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'  He
+was not thinking of that picture, but of his life.  He was going to
+leave her something in his Will; nothing could so have stirred the
+stilly deeps of thought and memory.  He was going to leave her a
+portion of his wealth, of his aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--
+all that had made that wealth; going to leave her, too, a part of
+all he had missed in life, by his sane and steady pursuit of
+wealth.  All! What had he missed?  'Dutch Fishing Boats' responded
+blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing the curtain
+aside, opened it.  A wind had got up, and one of last year's oak
+leaves which had somehow survived the gardener's brooms, was
+dragging itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace
+in the twilight.  Except for that it was very quiet out there, and
+he could smell the heliotrope watered not long since.  A bat went
+by.  A bird uttered its last 'cheep.'  And right above the oak tree
+the first star shone.  Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for
+some fresh years of youth.  Morbid notion!  No such bargain was
+possible, that was real tragedy! No making oneself new again for
+love or life or anything.  Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from
+afar off while you could, and leave it something in your Will.  But
+how much? And, as if he could not make that calculation looking out
+into the mild freedom of the country night, he turned back and went
+up to the chimney-piece.  There were his pet bronzes--a Cleopatra
+with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a greyhound playing with
+her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.  'They last!' he
+thought, and a pang went through his heart.  They had a thousand
+years of life before them!
+
+'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old
+before her time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as
+possible, and grey from soiling that bright hair.  He might live
+another five years.  She would be well over thirty by then.  'How
+much?'  She had none of his blood in her!  In loyalty to the tenor
+of his life for forty years and more, ever since he married and
+founded that mysterious thing, a family, came this warning thought-
+-None of his blood, no right to anything!  It was a luxury then,
+this notion.  An extravagance, a petting of an old man's whim, one
+of those things done in dotage.  His real future was vested in
+those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was gone.
+He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
+leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of
+cigars.  And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her
+grey dress, fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him.
+Why! She cared nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that
+lost lover of hers.  But she was there, whether she would or no,
+giving him pleasure with her beauty and grace.  One had no right to
+inflict an old man's company, no right to ask her down to play to
+him and let him look at her--for no reward!  Pleasure must be paid
+for in this world.  'How much?'  After all, there was plenty; his
+son and his three grandchildren would never miss that little lump.
+He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he could leave it where
+he liked, allow himself this little pleasure.  He went back to the
+bureau.  'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them think what
+they like.  I'm going to!'  And he sat down.
+
+'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with
+his money he could buy one year, one month of youth.  And startled
+by that thought, he wrote quickly:
+
+
+'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my
+niece Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes,
+fifteen thousand pounds free of legacy duty."
+'Yours faithfully,
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the
+window and drew in a long breath.  It was dark, but many stars
+shone now.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught
+him brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts.  Experience had
+also taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight
+showed the folly of such panic.  On this particular morning the
+thought which gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at
+his age not improbable, he would not see her.  From this it was but
+a step to realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son
+and June returned from Spain.  How could he justify desire for the
+company of one who had stolen--early morning does not mince words--
+June's lover?  That lover was dead; but June was a stubborn little
+thing; warm-hearted, but stubborn as wood, and--quite true--not one
+who forgot!  By the middle of next month they would be back.  He
+had barely five weeks left to enjoy the new interest which had come
+into what remained of his life.  Darkness showed up to him absurdly
+clear the nature of his feeling.  Admiration for beauty--a craving
+to see that which delighted his eyes.
+
+Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for
+asking June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his
+son and his son's wife from thinking him very queer?  He would be
+reduced to sneaking up to London, which tired him; and the least
+indisposition would cut him off even from that.  He lay with eyes
+open, setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself an
+old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop
+beating altogether.  He had seen the dawn lighting the window
+chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow,
+before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane.  Five weeks
+before he need bother, at his age an eternity!  But that early
+morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of
+one who had always had his own way.  He would see her as often as
+he wished!  Why not go up to town and make that codicil at his
+solicitor's instead of writing about it; she might like to go to
+the opera!  But, by train, for he would not have that fat chap
+Beacon grinning behind his back.  Servants were such fools; and, as
+likely as not, they had known all the past history of Irene and
+young Bosinney--servants knew everything, and suspected the rest.
+He wrote to her that morning:
+
+
+"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow.  If you
+would like to have a look in at the opera, come and dine
+with me quietly ...."
+
+But where?  It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London
+save at his Club or at a private house.  Ah! that new-fangled place
+close to Covent Garden....
+
+"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether
+to expect you there at 7 o'clock."
+"Yours affectionately,
+"JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+
+She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little
+pleasure; for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to
+see her was instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that
+one so old should go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a
+woman.
+
+The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his
+lawyer's, tired him.  It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner
+he lay down on the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little.  He must
+have had a sort of fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling
+very queer; and with some difficulty rose and rang the bell.  Why!
+it was past seven!  And there he was and she would be waiting.  But
+suddenly the dizziness came on again, and he was obliged to relapse
+on the sofa.  He heard the maid's voice say:
+
+"Did you ring, sir?"
+
+"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in
+front of his eyes.  "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."
+
+"Yes, sir."  Her voice sounded frightened.
+
+Old Jolyon made an effort.
+
+"Don't go.  Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the
+hall--a lady in grey.  Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat.  He
+is very sorry; if he is not down directly, she is not to wait
+dinner."
+
+When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in
+grey--she may be in anything.  Sal volatile!'  He did not go off
+again, yet was not conscious of how Irene came to be standing
+beside him, holding smelling salts to his nose, and pushing a
+pillow up behind his head.  He heard her say anxiously: "Dear Uncle
+Jolyon, what is it?" was dimly conscious of the soft pressure of
+her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of smelling salts,
+suddenly discovered strength in them, and sneezed.
+
+"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing.  How did you get here? Go down and
+dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table.  I shall be all right
+in a minute."
+
+He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat
+divided between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all
+right.
+
+"Why! You are in grey!" he said.  "Help me up."  Once on his feet
+he gave himself a shake.
+
+"What business had I to go off like that!"  And he moved very
+slowly to the glass.  What a cadaverous chap!  Her voice, behind
+him, murmured:
+
+"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!  A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights.  I
+can't have you missing the opera."
+
+But the journey down the corridor was troublesome.  What carpets
+they had in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up
+in them at every step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she
+looked, and said with the ghost of a twinkle:
+
+"I'm a pretty host."
+
+When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent
+its slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he
+felt much better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought
+such solicitude into her manner towards him.
+
+"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and
+watching the smile in her eyes, went on:
+
+"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life;
+plenty of that when you get to my age.  That's a nice dress--I like
+the style."
+
+"I made it myself."
+
+Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her
+interest in life.
+
+"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up.  I
+want to see some colour in your cheeks.  We mustn't waste life; it
+doesn't do.  There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she
+won't be fat.  And Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap
+playing the Devil I can't imagine."
+
+But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from
+dinner the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his
+staying quiet and going to bed early.  When he parted from her at
+the door of the hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to
+Chelsea, he sat down again for a moment to enjoy the memory of her
+words: "You are such a darling to me, Uncle Jolyon!"  Why! Who
+wouldn't be!  He would have liked to stay up another day and take
+her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would bore her to
+death.  No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised to come
+then.  They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a
+month.  It would be something.  That little Mam'zelle Beauce
+wouldn't like it, but she would have to lump it.  And crushing his
+old opera hat against his chest he sought the lift.
+
+He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:
+'Drive me to Chelsea.'  But his sense of proportion was too strong.
+Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another
+aberration like that of last night, away from home.  Holly, too,
+was expecting him, and what he had in his bag for her.  Not that
+there was any cupboard love in his little sweet--she was a bundle
+of affection.  Then, with the rather bitter cynicism of the old, he
+wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard love which made
+Irene put up with him.  No, she was not that sort either.  She had,
+if anything, too little notion of how to butter her bread, no sense
+of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not breathed a word about
+that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the day was the good
+thereof.
+
+In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining
+the dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home.
+All the rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was
+content and peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long
+lingering sunshine showered gold on the lawns and the flowers.  But
+on Thursday evening at his lonely dinner he began to count the
+hours; sixty-five till he would go down to meet her again in the
+little coppice, and walk up through the fields at her side.  He had
+intended to consult the doctor about his fainting fit, but the
+fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no excitement and all
+that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did not want to be
+told of an infirmity--if there were one, could not afford to hear
+of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.
+And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to
+his son.  It would only bring them back with a run!  How far this
+silence was due to consideration for their pleasure, how far to
+regard for his own, he did not pause to consider.
+
+That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was
+dozing off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious
+of a scent of violets.  Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in
+grey, standing by the fireplace, holding out her arms.  The odd
+thing was that, though those arms seemed to hold nothing, they were
+curved as if round someone's neck, and her own neck was bent back,
+her lips open, her eyes closed.  She vanished at once, and there
+were the mantelpiece and his bronzes.  But those bronzes and the
+mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only the fireplace and
+the wall!  Shaken and troubled, he got up.  'I must take medicine,'
+he thought; 'I can't be well.'  His heart beat too fast, he had an
+asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he opened
+it to get some air.  A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs at
+Gage's farm no doubt, beyond the coppice.  A beautiful still night,
+but dark.  'I dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it!  And yet I'll
+swear my eyes were open!'  A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.
+
+"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"
+
+Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he
+stepped out on the terrace.  Something soft scurried by in the
+dark.  "Shoo!"  It was that great grey cat.  'Young Bosinney was
+like a great cat!' he thought.  'It was him in there, that she--
+that she was--He's got her still!'  He walked to the edge of the
+terrace, and looked down into the darkness; he could just see the
+powdering of the daisies on the unmown lawn.  Here to-day and gone
+to-morrow!  And there came the moon, who saw all, young and old,
+alive and dead, and didn't care a dump!  His own turn soon.  For a
+single day of youth he would give what was left!  And he turned
+again towards the house.  He could see the windows of the night
+nursery up there.  His little sweet would be asleep.  'Hope that
+dog won't wake her!' he thought.  'What is it makes us love, and
+makes us die!  I must go to bed.'
+
+And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he
+passed back within.
+
+How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his
+well-spent past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating
+warmth, only pale winter sunshine.  The shell can withstand the
+gentle beating of the dynamos of memory.  The present he should
+distrust; the future shun.  From beneath thick shade he should
+watch the sunlight creeping at his toes.  If there be sun of
+summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking it for the
+Indian-summer sun!  Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,
+slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his
+wind-pipe and he gasps away to death some early morning before the
+world is aired, and they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of
+years!' yea!  If he preserve his principles in perfect order, a
+Forsyte may live on long after he is dead.
+
+Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that
+which transcended Forsyteism.  For it is written that a Forsyte
+shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than
+his own health.  And something beat within him in these days that
+with each throb fretted at the thinning shell.  His sagacity knew
+this, but it knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor
+would if he could.  And yet, if you had told him he was living on
+his capital, he would have stared you down.  No, no; a man did not
+live on his capital; it was not done!  The shibboleths of the past
+are ever more real than the actualities of the present.  And he, to
+whom living on one's capital had always been anathema, could not
+have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his own case.
+Pleasure is healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the
+youth of the young--and what else on earth was he doing!
+
+Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now
+arranged his time.  On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train;
+Irene came and dined with him.  And they went to the opera.  On
+Thursdays he drove to town, and, putting that fat chap and his
+horses up, met her in Kensington Gardens, picking up the carriage
+after he had left her, and driving home again in time for dinner.
+He threw out the casual formula that he had business in London on
+those two days.  On Wednesdays and Saturdays she came down to give
+Holly music lessons.  The greater the pleasure he took in her
+society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a matter-
+of-fact and friendly uncle.  Not even in feeling, really, was he
+more--for, after all, there was his age.  And yet, if she were late
+he fidgeted himself to death.  If she missed coming, which happened
+twice, his eyes grew sad as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.
+
+And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his
+heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof.  Who could have
+believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his
+son's and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread!
+There was such a delicious freedom, such recovery of that
+independence a man enjoys before he founds a family, about these
+weeks of lovely weather, and this new companionship with one who
+demanded nothing, and remained always a little unknown, retaining
+the fascination of mystery.  It was like a draught of wine to him
+who has been drinking water for so long that he has almost
+forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to his
+brain.  The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and
+the sunlight had a living value--were no longer mere reminders of
+past enjoy-ment.  There was something now to live for which stirred
+him continually to anticipation.  He lived in that, not in
+retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as he.
+The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one
+naturally abstemious, had lost all value.  He ate little, without
+knowing what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to
+look at.  He was again a 'threadpaper'; and to this thinned form
+his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more
+dignity than ever.  He was very well aware that he ought to see the
+doctor, but liberty was too sweet.  He could not afford to pet his
+frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the
+expense of liberty.  Return to the vegetable existence he had led
+among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels,
+before this new attraction came into his life--no! He exceeded his
+allowance of cigars.  Two a day had always been his rule.  Now he
+smoked three and sometimes four--a man will when he is filled with
+the creative spirit.  But very often he thought: 'I must give up
+smoking, and coffee; I must give up rattling up to town.'  But he
+did not; there was no one in any sort of authority to notice him,
+and this was a priceless boon.
+
+The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb.
+Mam'zelle Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too
+'wellbrrred' to make personal allusions.  Holly had not as yet an
+eye for the relative appearance of him who was her plaything and
+her god.  It was left for Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to
+rest in the hot part of the day, to take a tonic, and so forth.
+But she did not tell him that she was the a cause of his thinness--
+for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working.  A man of eighty-
+five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces passion works
+on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which crave the sight
+of Her.
+
+On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter
+from his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday.
+This had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic
+improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he
+had never quite admitted it.  Now he did, and something would have
+to be done.  He had ceased to be able to imagine life without this
+new interest, but that which is not imagined sometimes exists, as
+Forsytes are perpetually finding to their cost.  He sat in his old
+leather chair, doubling up the letter, and mumbling with his lips
+the end of an unlighted cigar.  After to-morrow his Tuesday
+expeditions to town would have to be abandoned.  He could still
+drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his man of
+business.  But even that would be dependent on his health, for now
+they would begin to fuss about him.  The lessons!  The lessons must
+go on!  She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her
+feelings in her pocket.  She had done so once, on the day after the
+news of Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely
+do again now.  Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--
+not Christian to keep the memory of old sores alive.  June's will
+was strong, but his was stronger, for his sands were running out.
+Irene was soft, surely she would do this for him, subdue her
+natural shrinking, sooner than give him pain!  The lessons must
+continue; for if they did, he was secure.  And lighting his cigar
+at last, he began trying to shape out how to put it to them all,
+and explain this strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away
+from the naked truth--that he could not bear to be deprived of the
+sight of beauty.  Ah! Holly!  Holly was fond of her, Holly liked
+her lessons.  She would save him--his little sweet!  And with that
+happy thought he became serene, and wondered what he had been
+worrying about so fearfully.  He must not worry, it left him always
+curiously weak, and as if but half present in his own body.
+
+That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though
+he did not faint.  He would not ring the bell, because he knew it
+would mean a fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more
+conspicuous.  When one grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy
+to limit freedom, and for what reason?--just to keep the breath in
+him a little longer.  He did not want it at such cost.  Only the
+dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery from that weakness; anxiously
+watched his master go to the sideboard and drink some brandy,
+instead of giving him a biscuit.  When at last old Jolyon felt able
+to tackle the stairs he went up to bed.  And, though still shaky
+next morning, the thought of the evening sustained and strengthened
+him.  It was always such a pleasure to give her a good dinner--he
+suspected her of undereating when she was alone; and, at the opera
+to watch her eyes glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her
+lips.  She hadn't much pleasure, and this was the last time he
+would be able to give her that treat.  But when he was packing his
+bag he caught himself wishing that he had not the fatigue of
+dressing for dinner before him, and the exertion, too, of telling
+her about June's return.
+
+The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last
+entr'acte to break the news, instinctively putting it off till the
+latest moment.
+
+She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had
+taken it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence
+became necessary.  The mask was down over her face, that mask
+behind which so much went on that he could not see.  She wanted
+time to think it over, no doubt!  He would not press her, for she
+would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow afternoon, and he
+should see her then when she had got used to the idea.  In the cab
+he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old days,
+but this one was not bad at all.  When he took her hand to say
+good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.
+
+"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."
+
+"To-morrow then," he said.  "Good-night.  Sleep well."  She echoed
+softly: "Sleep welll" and from the cab window, already moving away,
+he saw her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in
+a gesture which seemed to linger.
+
+He sought his room slowly.  They never gave him the same, and he
+could not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new
+furniture and grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink
+roses.  He was wakeful and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in
+his head.
+
+His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he
+knew, if it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable.
+Well, there was in life something which upset all your care and
+plans--something which made men and women dance to its pipes.  And
+he lay staring from deep-sunk eyes into the darkness where the
+unaccountable held sway.  You thought you had hold of life, but it
+slipped away behind you, took you by the scruff of the neck, forced
+you here and forced you there, and then, likely as not, squeezed
+life out of you!  It took the very stars like that, he shouldn't
+wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them apart; it had
+never done playing its pranks.  Five million people in this great
+blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that Life-
+Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board
+when you struck your fist on it.  Ah, well! Himself would not hop
+much longer--a good long sleep would do him good!
+
+How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had
+kissed it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had
+known the very place and wanted to kiss it all away for him.  But,
+instead, her lips left a patch of grievous uneasiness.  She had
+never spoken in quite that voice, had never before made that
+lingering gesture or looked back at him as she drove away.
+
+He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced
+down over the river.  There was little air, but the sight of that
+breadth of water flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him.  'The
+great thing,' he thought 'is not to make myself a nuisance.  I'll
+think of my little sweet, and go to sleep.'  But it was long before
+the heat and throbbing of the London night died out into the short
+slumber of the summer morning.  And old Jolyon had but forty winks.
+
+When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and
+with the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers,
+gathered a great bunch of carnations.  They were, he told her, for
+'the lady in grey'--a name still bandied between them; and he put
+them in a bowl in his study where he meant to tackle Irene the
+moment she came, on the subject of June and future lessons.  Their
+fragrance and colour would help.  After lunch he lay down, for he
+felt very tired, and the carriage would not bring her from the
+station till four o'clock.  But as the hour approached he grew
+restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.
+The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle
+Beauce, sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending
+to their silkworms.  Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these
+methodical creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of
+elephants; who nibbled such quantities of holes in nice green
+leaves; and smelled, as he thought, horrid.  He sat down on a
+chintz-covered windowseat whence he could see the drive, and get
+what air there was; and the dog Balthasar who appreciated chintz on
+hot days, jumped up beside him.  Over the cottage piano a violet
+dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and on it the first
+lavender, whose scent filled the room.  In spite of the coolness
+here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life vehemently
+impressed his ebbed-down senses.  Each sunbeam which came through
+the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong;
+the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up
+their grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head
+bent over them had a wonderfully silky sheen.  A marvellous cruelly
+strong thing was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock
+you with its multitude of forms and its beating vitality.  He had
+never, till those last few weeks, had this curious feeling of being
+with one half of him eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and
+with the other half left on the bank, watching that helpless
+progress.  Only when Irene was with him did he lose this double
+consciousness.
+
+Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
+piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said
+slyly:
+
+"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"
+
+Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was
+clouded; then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:
+
+"Who's been dressing her up?"
+
+"Mam'zelle."
+
+"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"
+
+That prim little Frenchwoman!  She hadn't yet got over the music
+lessons being taken away from her.  That wouldn't help.  His little
+sweet was the only friend they had.  Well, they were her lessons.
+And he shouldn't budge shouldn't budge for anything.  He stroked
+the warm wool on Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When
+mother's home, there won't be any changes, will there?  She doesn't
+like strangers, you know."
+
+The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of
+opposition about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his
+new-found freedom.  Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an
+old man at the mercy of care and love, or fight to keep this new
+and prized companionship; and to fight tired him to death.  But his
+thin, worn face hardened into resolution till it appeared all Jaw.
+This was his house, and his affair; he should not budge!  He looked
+at his watch, old and thin like himself; he had owned it fifty
+years.  Past four already!  And kissing the top of Holly's head in
+passing, he went down to the hall.  He wanted to get hold of her
+before she went up to give her lesson.  At the first sound of
+wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the
+victoria was empty.
+
+"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."
+
+Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push
+away that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter
+disappointment he was feeling.
+
+"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house.  He went to
+his study and sat down, quivering like a leaf.  What did this mean?
+She might have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't.
+'Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon.'  Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-
+night'?  And that hand of hers lingering in the air.  And her kiss.
+What did it mean?  Vehement alarm and irritation took possession of
+him.  He got up and began to pace the Turkey carpet, between window
+and wall.  She was going to give him up!  He felt it for certain--
+and he defenceless.  An old man wanting to look on beauty!  It was
+ridiculous!  Age closed his mouth, paralysed his power to fight.
+He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to anything
+but memories and sorrow.  He could not plead with her; even an old
+man has his dignity.  Defenceless!  For an hour, lost to bodily
+fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had
+plucked, which mocked him with its scent.  Of all things hard to
+bear, the prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has
+always had his way.  Nature had got him in its net, and like an
+unhappy fish he turned and swam at the meshes, here and there,
+found no hole, no breaking point.  They brought him tea at five
+o'clock, and a letter.  For a moment hope beat up in him.  He cut
+the envelope with the butter knife, and read:
+
+
+"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
+disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night.  I
+feel I can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that
+June is coming back.  Some things go too deep to be forgotten.  It
+has been such a joy to see you and Holly.  Perhaps I shall still
+see you sometimes when you come up, though I'm sure it's not good
+for you; I can see you are tiring yourself too much.  I believe you
+ought to rest quite quietly all this hot weather, and now you have
+your son and June coming back you will be so happy.  Thank you a
+million times for all your sweetness to me.
+
+"Lovingly your IRENE."
+
+
+So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he
+chiefly cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end
+of all things, the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling
+footsteps.  Not good for him!  Not even she could see how she was
+his new lease of interest in life, the incarnation of all the
+beauty he felt slipping from him.
+
+His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he
+paced, torn between his dignity and his hold on life.  Intolerable
+to be squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on
+when your will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to
+the ground with care and love.  Intolerable!  He would see what
+telling her the truth would do--the truth that he wanted the sight
+of her more than just a lingering on.  He sat down at his old
+bureau and took a pen.  But he could not write.  There was some-
+thing revolting in having to plead like this; plead that she should
+warm his eyes with her beauty.  It was tantamount to confessing
+dotage.  He simply could not.  And instead, he wrote:
+
+
+"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to
+stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my
+little grand-daughter.  But old men learn to forego their whims;
+they are obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner
+or later; and perhaps the sooner the better.
+"My love to you,
+"JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+
+'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it.  I'm tired.'  He sealed
+and dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it
+fall to the bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward
+to!'
+
+That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his
+cigar which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went
+very slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery.  He sat down
+on the window-seat.  A night-light was burning, and he could just
+see Holly's face, with one hand underneath the cheek.  An early
+cockchafer buzzed in the Japanese paper with which they had filled
+the grate, and one of the horses in the stable stamped restlessly.
+To sleep like that child!  He pressed apart two rungs of the
+venetian blind and looked out.  The moon was rising, blood-red.  He
+had never seen so red a moon.  The woods and fields out there were
+dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the summer light.
+And beauty, like a spirit, walked.  'I've had a long life,' he
+thought, 'the best of nearly everything.  I'm an ungrateful chap;
+I've seen a lot of beauty in my time.  Poor young Bosinney said I
+had a sense of beauty.  There's a man in the moon to-night!'  A
+moth went by, another, another.  'Ladies in grey!'  He closed his
+eyes.  A feeling that he would never open them again beset him; he
+let it grow, let himself sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the
+lids up.  There was something wrong with him, no doubt, deeply
+wrong; he would have to have the doctor after all.  It didn't much
+matter now!  Into that coppice the moon-light would have crept;
+there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the only things
+awake.  No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the shadows--
+moving; 'Ladies in grey!'  Over that log they would climb; would
+whisper together.  She and Bosinney!  Funny thought!  And the frogs
+and little things would whisper too!  How the clock ticked, in
+here!  It was all eerie-out there in the light of that red moon; in
+here with the little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and
+the nurse's dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen,
+tall, like a woman's figure.  'Lady in grey!'  And a very odd
+thought beset him: Did she exist?  Had she ever come at all?  Or
+was she but the emanation of all the beauty he had loved and must
+leave so soon?  The violet-grey spirit with the dark eyes and the
+crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and the moonlight, and at
+blue-bell time?  What was she, who was she, did she exist?  He rose
+and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him a sense
+of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door.  He
+stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his
+eyes fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in
+defence.  He tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage;
+reached his room, undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in
+his night-shirt.  What a scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and
+thin legs! His eyes resisted his own image, and a look of pride
+came on his face.  All was in league to pull him down, even his
+reflection in the glass, but he was not down--yet!  He got into
+bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying to reach
+resignation, only too well aware that fretting and disappointment
+were very bad for him.  He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and
+strengthless that he sent for the doctor.  After sounding him, the
+fellow pulled a face as long as your arm, and ordered him to stay
+in bed and give up smoking.  That was no hardship; there was
+nothing to get up for, and when he felt ill, tobacco always lost
+its savour.  He spent the morning languidly with the sun-blinds
+down, turning and re-turning The Times, not reading much, the dog
+Balthasar lying beside his bed.  With his lunch they brought him a
+telegram, running thus:
+
+
+'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you
+at four-thirty.  Irene.'
+
+
+Coming down!  After all!  Then she did exist--and he was not
+deserted.  Coming down!  A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks
+and forehead felt hot.  He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-
+table away, lying very quiet until they had removed lunch and left
+him alone; but every now and then his eyes twinkled.  Coming down!
+His heart beat fast, and then did not seem to beat at all.  At
+three o'clock he got up and dressed deliberately, noiselessly.
+Holly and Mam'zelle would be in the schoolroom, and the servants
+asleep after their dinner, he shouldn't wonder.  He opened his door
+cautiously, and went downstairs.  In the hall the dog Balthasar lay
+solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed into his study
+and out into the burning afternoon.  He meant to go down and meet
+her in the coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in
+this heat.  He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing,
+and the dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him.
+He sat there smiling.  What a revel of bright minutes!  What a hum
+of insects, and cooing of pigeons!  It was the quintessence of a
+summer day.  Lovely!  And he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, what-
+ever that might be.  She was coming; she had not given him up!  He
+had everything in life he wanted--except a little more breath, and
+less weight--just here!  He would see her when she emerged from the
+fernery, come swaying just a little, a violet-grey figure passing
+over the daisies and dandelions and 'soldiers' on the lawn--the
+soldiers with their flowery crowns.  He would not move, but she
+would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am sorry!' and
+sit in the swing and let him look at her and tell her that he had
+not been very well but was all right now; and that dog would lick
+her hand.  That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a
+good dog.
+
+It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him,
+only make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the
+Grand Stand at Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows crop-
+ping the clover in the field and swishing at the flies with their
+tails.  He smelled the scent of limes, and lavender.  Ah!  that was
+why there was such a racket of bees.  They were excited--busy, as
+his heart was busy and excited.  Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on
+honey and happiness; as his heart was drugged and drowsy.  Summer--
+summer--they seemed saying; great bees and little bees, and the
+flies too!
+
+The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here.
+He would have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep
+of late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and
+beauty, coming towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey!
+And settling back in his chair he closed his eyes.  Some thistle-
+down came on what little air there was, and pitched on his
+moustache more white than itself.  He did not know; but his
+breathing stirred it, caught there.  A ray of sunlight struck
+through and lodged on his boot.  A bumble-bee alighted and strolled
+on the crown of his Panama hat.  And the delicious surge of slumber
+reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward and
+rested on his breast.  Summer--summer!  So went the hum.
+
+The stable clock struck the quarter past.  The dog Balthasar
+stretched and looked up at his master.  The thistledown no longer
+moved.  The dog placed his chin over the sunlit foot.  It did not
+stir.  The dog withdrew his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old
+Jolyon's lap, looked in his face, whined; then, leaping down, sat
+on his haunches, gazing up.  And suddenly he uttered a long, long
+howl.
+
+But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old
+master.
+
+Summer--summer--summer!  The soundless footsteps on the grass!
+
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN CHANCERY
+
+Two households both alike in dignity,
+>From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny.
+
+---Romeo and Juliet
+
+
+
+TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD
+
+
+
+
+
+PART 1
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AT TIMOTHY'S
+
+
+The possessive instinct never stands still.  Through florescence
+and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression
+even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever.
+Nor can it be dissociated from environment any more than the
+quality of potato from the soil.
+
+The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his
+good time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from self-
+contented and contained provincialism to still more self-contented
+if less contained imperialism--in other words, the 'possessive'
+instinct of the nation on the move.  And so, as if in conformity,
+was it with the Forsyte family.  They were spreading not merely on
+the surface, but within.
+
+When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed
+her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was
+cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes
+left.  For this apathy there were three causes.  First: the almost
+surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill--
+first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at Highgate.  That
+burial, coming a year after Swithin's entirely proper funeral, had
+occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte 'Change, the abode of
+Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road, London, which still col-
+lected and radiated family gossip.  Opinions ranged from the
+lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of Francie
+that it was 'a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate
+business.'  Uncle Jolyon in his later years--indeed, ever since the
+strangeand lamentable affair between his granddaughter June's
+lover, young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte's wife-
+-had noticeably rapped the family's knuckles; and that way of his
+own which he had always taken had begun to seem to them a little
+wayward.  The philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been
+too liable to crop out of the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they
+were in a way prepared for his interment in a strange spot.  But
+the whole thing was an odd business, and when the contents of his
+Will became current coin on Forsyte 'Change, a shiver had gone
+round the clan.  Out of his estate (L145,304 gross, with
+liabilities L35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left L15,000 to "whomever
+do you think, my dear?  To Irene!" that runaway wife of his nephew
+Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family, and--
+still more amazing was to him no blood relation.  Not out and out,
+of course; only a life interest--only the income from it!  Still,
+there it was; and old Jolyon's claim to be the perfect Forsyte was
+ended once for all.  That, then, was the first reason why the
+burial of Susan Hayman--at Woking--made little stir.  The second
+reason was altogether more expansive and imperial.  Besides the
+house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by Hayman when
+he died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman boys had
+learned to be such good shots and riders, as it was believed, which
+was of course nice for them, and creditable to everybody; and the
+fact of owning something really countrified seemed somehow to
+excuse the dispersion of her remains--though what could have put
+cremation into her head they could not think!  The usual
+invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had gone down and
+young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite satisfactory so far as
+it went, for she had only had a life interest; and everything had
+gone quite smoothly to the children in equal shares.
+
+The third reason why Susan's burial made little stir was the most
+expansive of all.  It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the pale,
+the thin: "Well, I think people have a right to their own bodies,
+even when they're dead."  Coming from a daughter of Nicholas, a
+Liberal of the old school and most tyrannical, it was a startling
+remark--showing in a flash what a lot of water had run under
+bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in '86, just when the
+proprietorship of Soames over his wife's body was acquiring the
+uncertainty which had led to such disaster.  Euphemia, of course,
+spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over
+thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte.  But, making all
+allowances, her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the
+principle of liberty, decentralisation and shift in the central
+point of possession from others to oneself.  When Nicholas heard
+his daughter's remark from Aunt Hester he had rapped out: "Wives
+and daughters!  There's no end to their liberty in these days.  I
+knew that 'Jackson' case would lead to things--lugging in Habeas
+Corpus like that!"  He had, of course, never really forgiven the
+Married Woman's Property Act, which would so have interfered with
+him if he--had not mercifully married before it was passed.  But,
+in truth, there was no denying the revolt among the younger
+Forsytes against being owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial
+disposition to own oneself, which is the paradoxical forerunner of
+Imperialism, was making progress all the time.  They were all now
+married, except George, confirmed to the Turf and the Iseeum Club;
+Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio off the King's
+Road, Chelsea, and still taking 'lovers' to dances; Euphemia,
+living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two Dromios,
+Giles and Jesse Hayman.  Of the third generation there were not
+very many--young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young
+Nicholas six already, young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one;
+St. John Hayman two.  But the rest of the sixteen married--Soames,
+Rachel and Cicely of James' family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger's;
+Ernest, Archibald and Florence of Nicholas'; Augustus and Annabel
+Spender of the Hayman's--were going down the years unreproduced.
+
+Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been
+born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only
+seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there
+would be more than a further unconsidered trifle or so.  A student
+of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in
+accordance with the rate of interest for your money.  Grandfather
+'Superior Dosset' Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had been
+getting ten per cent. for his, hence ten children.  Those ten,
+leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose husband
+Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once, had averaged
+from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced accordingly.
+The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting barely three per
+cent. in the Consols to which their father had mostly tied the
+Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them
+who had been reproduced had seventeen children, or just the proper
+two and five-sixths per stem.
+
+There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction.  A
+distrust of their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency is
+guaranteed, together with the knowledge that their fathers did not
+die, kept them cautious.  If one had children and not much income,
+the standard of taste and comfort must of necessity go down; what
+was enough for two was not enough for four, and so on-it would be
+better to wait and see what Father did.  Besides, it was nice to be
+able to take holidays unhampered.  Sooner in fact than own
+children, they preferred to concentrate on the ownership of them-
+selves, conforming to the growing tendency fin de siecle, as it
+was called.  In this way, little risk was run, and one would be
+able to have a motor-car.  Indeed, Eustace already had one, but it
+had shaken him horribly, and broken one of his eye teeth; so that
+it would be better to wait till they were a little safer.  In the
+meantime, no more children!  Even young Nicholas was drawing in his
+horns, and had made no addition to his six for quite three years.
+
+The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion
+rather, of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so far
+as to prevent a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899.  It had been
+a glorious summer, and after holidays abroad and at the sea they
+were practically all back in London, when Roger with a touch of his
+old originality had suddenly breathed his last at his own house in
+Princes Gardens.  At Timothy's it was whispered sadly that poor
+Roger had always been eccentric about his digestion--had he not,
+for instance, preferred German mutton to all the other brands?  Be
+that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and
+coming away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for his
+Uncle Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.  The 'Old Things'--Aunt
+Juley and Aunt Hester--would like to hear about.  it.  His father--
+James--at  eighty-eight had not felt up to the fatigue of the
+funeral; and Timothy himself, of course, had not gone; so that
+Nicholas had been the only brother present.  Still, there had been
+a fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley and Hester up to
+know.  The kindly thought was not unmixed with the inevitable
+longing to get something out of everything you do, which is the
+chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the saner elements
+in every nation.  In this practice of taking family matters to
+Timothy's in the Bayswater Road, Soames was but following in the
+footsteps of his father, who had been in the habit of going at
+least once a week to see his sisters at Timothy's, and had only
+given it up when he lost his nerve at eighty-six, and could not go
+out without Emily.  To go with Emily was of no use, for who could
+really talk to anyone in the presence of his own wife?  Like James
+in the old days, Soames found time to go there nearly every Sunday,
+and sit in the little drawing-room into which, with his undoubted
+taste, he had introduced a good deal of change and china not quite
+up to his own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful
+Barbizon pictures, at Christmastides.  He himself, who had done
+extremely well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved
+towards the Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do
+better.  In the riverside house which he now inhabited near
+Mapledurham he had a gallery, beautifully hung and lighted, to
+which few London dealers were strangers.  It served, too, as a
+Sunday afternoon attraction in those week-end parties which his
+sisters, Winifred or Rachel, occasionally organised for him.  For
+though he was but a taciturn showman, his quiet collected
+determinism seldom failed to influence his guests, who knew that
+his reputation was grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his
+power of gauging the future of market values.  When he went to
+Timothy's he almost always had some little tale of triumph over a
+dealer to unfold, and dearly he loved that coo of pride with which
+his aunts would greet it.  This afternoon, however, he was
+differently animated, coming from Roger's funeral in his neat dark
+clothes--not quite black, for after all an uncle was but an uncle,
+and his soul abhorred excessive display of feeling.  Leaning back
+in a marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted, nose at the
+sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably
+silent.  Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the
+peculiar Forsyte build of his face was seen to the best advantage
+this afternoon--a face concave and long, with a jaw which divested
+of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face
+though not at all ill-looking.  He was feeling more strongly than
+ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of
+his aunts dismally mid-Victorian.  The subject on which alone he
+wanted to talk--his own undivorced position--was unspeakable.  And
+yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else.  It was only
+since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown up
+which was egging him on towards what he knew might well be folly in
+a Forsyte of forty-five.  More and more of late he had been
+conscious that he was 'getting on.'  The fortune already
+considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had
+finally wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with
+surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during which he had
+devoted himself to little else.  He was worth to-day well over a
+hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to--no real
+object for going on with what was his religion.  Even if he were to
+relax his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would have
+a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where he was.  There
+had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side to
+Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now
+had crept out again in this his 'prime of life.'  Concreted and
+focussed of late by the attraction of a girl's undoubted beauty, it
+had become a veritable prepossession.  And this girl was French,
+not likely to lose her head, or accept any unlegalised position.
+Moreover, Soames himself disliked the thought of that.  He had
+tasted of the sordid side of sex during those long years of forced
+celibacy, secretively, and always with disgust, for he was
+fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate.  He wanted no
+hole and corner liaison.  A marriage at the Embassy in Paris, a few
+months' travel, and he could bring Annette back quite separated
+from a past which in truth was not too distinguished, for she only
+kept the accounts in her mother's Soho Restaurant; he could bring
+her back as something very new and chic with her French taste and
+self-possession, to reign at 'The Shelter' near Mapledurham.  On
+Forsyte 'Change and among his riverside friends it would be current
+that he had met a charming French girl on his travels and married
+her.  There would be the flavour of romance, and a certain cachet
+about a French wife.  No! He was not at all afraid of that.  It was
+only this cursed undivorced condition of his, and--and the question
+whether Annette would take him, which he dared not put to the touch
+until he had a clear and even dazzling future to offer her.
+
+In his aunts' drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those
+usual questions: How was his dear father?  Not going out, of
+course, now that the weather was turning chilly?  Would Soames be
+sure to tell him that Hester had found boiled holly leaves most
+comforting for that pain in her side; a poultice every three hours,
+with red flannel afterwards.  And could he relish just a little pot
+of their very best prune preserve it was so delicious this year,
+and had such a wonderful effect.  Oh! and about the Darties--had
+Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most distressing time
+with Montague?  Timothy thought she really ought to have protect-
+ion.  It was said--but Soames mustn't take this for certain--that
+he had given some of Winifred's jewellery to a dreadful dancer.  It
+was such a bad example for dear Val just as he was going to
+college.  Soames had not heard?  Oh, but he must go and see his
+sister and look into it at once!  And did he think these Boers were
+really going to resist?  Timothy was in quite a stew about it.  The
+price of Consols was so high, and he had such a lot of money in
+them.  Did Soames think they must go down if there was a war?
+Soames nodded.  But it would be over very quickly.  It would be so
+bad for Timothy if it wasn't.  And of course Soames' dear father
+would feel it very much at his age.  Luckily poor dear Roger had
+been spared this dreadful anxiety.  And Aunt Juley with a little
+handkerchief wiped away the large tear trying to climb the
+permanent pout on her now quite withered left cheek; she was
+remembering dear Roger, and all his originality, and how he used to
+stick pins into her when they were little together.  Aunt Hester,
+with her instinct for avoiding the unpleasant, here chimed in: Did
+Soames think they would make Mr. Chamberlain Prime Minister at
+once?  He would settle it all so quickly.  She would like to see
+that old Kruger sent to St. Helena.  She could remember so well the
+news of Napoleon's death, and what a, relief it had been to his
+grandfather.  Of course she and Juley..." We were in pantalettes
+then, my dear"--had not felt it much at the time.
+
+Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate three
+of those macaroons for which Timothy's was famous.  His faint,
+pale, supercilious smile had deepened just a little.  Really, his
+family remained hopelessly provincial, however much of London they
+might possess between them.  In these go-ahead days their provinc-
+ialism stared out even more than it used to.  Why, old Nicholas was
+still a Free Trader, and a member of that antediluvian home of
+Liberalism, the Remove Club--though, to be sure, the members were
+pretty well all Conservatives now, or he himself could not have
+joined; and Timothy, they said, still wore a nightcap.  Aunt Juley
+spoke again.  Dear Soames was looking so well, hardly a day older
+than he did when dear Ann died, and they were all there together,
+dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear Roger.  She paused and
+caught the tear which had climbed the pout on her right cheek.  Did
+he--did he ever hear anything of Irene nowadays?  Aunt Hester
+visibly interposed her shoulder.  Really, Juley was always saying
+something!  The smile left Soames' face, and he put his cup down.
+Here was his subject broached for him, and for all his desire to
+expand, he could not take advantage.
+
+Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:
+
+"They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out and
+out; then of course he saw it would not be right, and made it for
+her life only."
+
+Had Soames heard that?
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now.  He is her trustee; you knew
+that, of course?"
+
+Soames shook his head.  He did know, but wished to show no
+interest.  Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of
+Bosinney's death.
+
+"He must be quite middle-aged by now," went on Aunt Juley dreamily.
+"Let me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in Mount
+Street; long before they went to Stanhope Gate in December.  Just
+before that dreadful Commune.  Over fifty!  Fancy that!  Such a
+pretty baby, and we were all so proud of him; the very first of you
+all."  Aunt Juley sighed, and a lock of not quite her own hair came
+loose and straggled, so that Aunt Hester gave a little shiver.
+Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious piece of self-discovery.
+That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was not yet closed.  He
+had come thinking he could talk of it, even wanting to talk of his
+fettered condition, and--behold! he was shrinking away from this
+reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her Malapropisms.
+
+Oh, Soames was not going already!
+
+Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:
+
+"Yes.  Good-bye.  Remember me to Uncle Timothy!"  And, leaving a
+cold kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and cling
+to his lips as if longing to be kissed away, he left them looking
+brightly after him--dear Soames, it had been so good of him to come
+to-day, when they were not feeling very....!
+
+With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs,
+where was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor and port
+wine, and house where draughts are not permitted.  The poor old
+things--he had not meant to be unkind!  And in the street he
+instantly forgot them, repossessed by the image of Annette and the
+thought of the cursed coil around him.  Why had he not pushed the
+thing through and obtained divorce when that wretched Bosinney was
+run over, and there was evidence galore for the asking!  And he
+turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie's residence in Green
+Street, Mayfair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD
+
+
+That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of fortunes
+as Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he had
+inhabited twenty years at least would have been more noticeable if
+the rent, rates, taxes, and repairs of that house had not been
+defrayed by his father-in-law.  By that simple if wholesale device
+James Forsyte had secured a certain stability in the lives of his
+daughter and his grandchildren.  After all, there is something
+invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a sportsman so
+dashing as Dartie.  Until the events of the last few days he had
+been almost-supernaturally steady all this year.  The fact was he
+had acquired a half share in a filly of George Forsyte's, who had
+gone irreparably on the turf, to the horror of Roger, now stilled
+by the grave.  Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of Shirt-on-fire, by
+Suspender, was a bay filly, three years old, who for a variety of
+reasons had never shown her true form.  With half ownership of this
+hopeful animal, all the idealism latent somewhere in Dartie, as in
+every other man, had put up its head, and kept him quietly ardent
+for months past.  When a man has some thing good to live for it is
+astonishing how sober he becomes; and what Dartie had was really
+good--a three to one chance for an autumn handicap, publicly
+assessed at twenty-five to one.  The old-fashioned heaven was a
+poor thing beside it, and his shirt was on the daughter of Shirt-
+on-fire.  But how much more than his shirt depended on this
+granddaughter of Suspender!  At that roving age of forty-five,
+trying to Forsytes--and, though perhaps less distinguishable from
+any other age, trying even to Darties--Montague had fixed his
+current fancy on a dancer.  It was no mean passion, but without
+money, and a good deal of it, likely to remain a love as airy as
+her skirts; and Dartie never had any money, subsisting miserably on
+what he could beg or borrow from Winifred--a woman of character,
+who kept him because he was the father of her children, and from a
+lingering admiration for those now-dying Wardour Street good looks
+which in their youth had fascinated her.  She, together with anyone
+else who would lend him anything, and his losses at cards and on
+the turf (extraordinary how some men make a good thing out of
+losses!) were his whole means of subsistence; for James was now too
+old and nervous to approach, and Soames too formidably adamant.  It
+is not too much to say that Dartie had been living on hope for
+months.  He had never been fond of money for itself, had always
+despised the Forsytes with their investing habits, though careful
+to make such use of them as he could.  What he liked about money
+was what it bought--personal sensation.
+
+"No real sportsman cares for money," he would say, borrowing a
+'pony' if it was no use trying for a 'monkey.'  There was something
+delicious about Montague Dartie.  He was, as George Forsyte said, a
+'daisy.'
+
+The morning of the Handicap dawned clear and bright, the last day
+of September, and Dartie who had travelled to Newmarket the night
+before, arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an
+eminence to see his half of the filly take her final canter: If she
+won he would be a cool three thou. in pocket--a poor enough
+recompense for the sobriety and patience of these weeks of hope,
+while they had been nursing her for this race.  But he had not been
+able to afford more.  Should he 'lay it off' at the eight to one to
+which she had advanced?  This was his single thought while the
+larks sang above him, and the grassy downs smelled sweet, and the
+pretty filly passed, tossing her head and glowing like satin.
+
+After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid, and to 'lay it
+off' would reduce his winnings to some fifteen hundred--hardly
+enough to purchase a dancer out and out.  Even more potent was the
+itch in the blood of all the Darties for a real flutter.  And
+turning to George he said: "She's a clipper.  She'll win hands
+down; I shall go the whole hog."  George, who had laid off every
+penny, and a few besides, and stood to win, however it came out,
+grinned down on him from his bulky height, with the words: "So ho,
+my wild one!" for after a chequered apprenticeship weathered with
+the money of a deeply complaining Roger, his Forsyte blood was
+beginning to stand him in good stead in the profession of owner.
+
+There are moments of disillusionment in the lives of men from which
+the sensitive recorder shrinks.  Suffice it to say that the good
+thing fell down.  Sleeve-links finished in the ruck.  Dartie's
+shirt was lost.
+
+Between the passing of these things and the day when Soames turned
+his face towards Green Street, what had not happened!
+
+When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised
+self-control for months from religious motives, and remains un-
+rewarded, he does not curse God and die, he curses God and lives,
+to the distress of his family.
+
+Winifred--a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable--who had
+borne the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never
+really believed that he would do what he now did.  Like so many
+wives, she thought she knew the worst, but she had not yet known
+him in his forty-fifth year, when he, like other men, felt that it
+was now or never.  Paying on the 2nd of October a visit of inspec-
+tion to her jewel case, she was horrified to observe that her
+woman's crown and glory was gone--the pearls which Montague had
+given her in '86, when Benedict was born, and which James had been
+compelled to pay for in the spring of '87, to save scandal.  She
+consulted her husband at once.  He 'pooh-poohed' the matter.  They
+would turn up!  Nor till she said sharply: "Very well, then, Monty,
+I shall go down to Scotland Yard myself," did he consent to take
+the matter in hand.  Alas! that the steady and resolved continuity
+of design necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping operations
+should be liable to interruption by drink.  That night Dartie
+returned home without a care in the world or a particle of
+reticence.  Under normal conditions Winifred would merely have
+locked her door and let him sleep it off, but torturing suspense
+about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him.  Taking a small
+revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining table, he
+told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether she lived
+s'long as she was quiet; but he himself wash tired o' life.
+Winifred, holding onto the other side of the dining table,
+answered:
+
+"Don't be a clown, Monty.  Have you been to Scotland Yard?"
+
+Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the
+trigger several times.  It was not loaded.  Dropping it with an
+imprecation, he had muttered: "For shake o' the children," and sank
+into a chair.  Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave him
+some soda water.  The liquor had a magical effect.  Life had
+illused him; Winifred had never 'unshtood'm.'  If he hadn't the
+right to take the pearls he had given her himself, who had?  That
+Spanish filly had got'm.  If Winifred had any 'jection he w'd cut--
+her--throat.  What was the matter with that?  (Probably the first
+use of that celebrated phrase--so obscure are the origins of even
+the most classical language!)
+
+Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school, looked
+up at him, and said: "Spanish filly!  Do you mean that girl we saw
+dancing in the Pandemonium Ballet?  Well, you are a thief and a
+blackguard."  It had been the last straw on a sorely loaded
+consciousness; reaching up from his chair Dartie seized his wife's
+arm, and recalling the achievements of his boyhood, twisted it.
+Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes, but no murmur.
+Watching for a moment of weakness, she wrenched it free; then
+placing the dining table between them, said between her teeth: "You
+are the limit, Monty."  (Undoubtedly the inception of that phrase--
+so is English formed under the stress of circumstances.) Leaving
+Dartie with foam on his dark moustache she went upstairs, and,
+after locking her door and bathing her arm in hot water, lay awake
+all night, thinking of her pearls adorning the neck of another, and
+of the consideration her husband had presumably received therefor.
+
+The man of the world awoke with a sense of  being lost to that
+world, and a dim recollection  of having been called a 'limit.'  He
+sat for half  an hour in the dawn and the armchair where he  had
+slept perhaps the unhappiest half-hour he  had ever spent, for even
+to a Dartie there is something tragic about an end.  And he knew
+that he  had reached it.  Never again would he sleep in his
+dining-room and wake with the light filtering  through those
+curtains bought by Winifred at  Nickens and Jarveys with the money
+of James.  Never again eat a devilled kidney at that rose-wood
+table, after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath.  He took his note
+case from his dress coat pocket.  Four hundred pounds, in fives and
+tens--the remainder of the proceeds of his half of Sleeve-links,
+sold last night, cash down, to George Forsyte, who, having won over
+the race, had not conceived the sudden dislike to the animal which
+he himself now felt.  The ballet was going to Buenos Aires the day
+after to-morrow, and he was going too.  Full value for the pearls
+had not yet been received; he was only at the soup.
+
+He stole upstairs.  Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides,
+the water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed
+stealthily all he could.  It was hard to leave so many shining
+boots, but one must sacrifice something.  Then, carrying a valise
+in either hand, he stepped out onto the landing.  The house was
+very quiet--that house where he had begotten his four children.  It
+was a curious moment, this, outside the room of his wife, once
+admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him 'the limit.'  He
+steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but the next door
+was harder to pass.  It was the room his daughters slept in.  Maud
+was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture came
+into Dartie's early morning eyes.  She was the most like him of the
+four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance.  Just
+coming out, a pretty thing!  He set down the two valises.  This
+almost formal abdication of fatherhood hurt him.  The morning light
+fell on a face which worked with real emotion.  Nothing so false as
+penitence moved him; but genuine paternal feeling, and that
+melancholy of 'never again.'  He moistened his lips; and complete
+irresolution for a moment paralysed his legs in their check
+trousers.  It was hard--hard to be thus compelled to leave his
+home!  "D---nit!" he muttered, "I never thought it would come to
+this."  Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning to
+get up.  And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on downstairs.
+His cheeks were wet, and the knowledge of that was comforting, as
+though it guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice.  He lingered
+a little in the rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some
+papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide.  Then,
+mixing himself a stiff whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette,
+he stood hesitating before a photograph of his two girls, in a
+silver frame.  It belonged to Winifred.  'Never mind,' he thought;
+'she can get another taken, and I can't!'  He slipped it into the
+valise.  Then; putting on his hat and overcoat, he took two others,
+his best malacca cane, an umbrella, and opened the front door.
+Closing it softly behind him, he walked out, burdened as he had
+never been in all his life, and made his way round the corner to
+wait there for an early cab to come by.
+
+Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age
+from the house which he had called his own.
+
+When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house,
+her first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude
+the reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful
+hours.  He had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman
+as likely as not.  Disgusting!  Forced to a complete reticence
+before Imogen and the servants, and aware that her father's nerves
+would never stand the disclosure, she had been unable to refrain
+from going to Timothy's that afternoon, and pouring out the story
+of the pearls to Aunts Juley and Hester in utter confidence.  It
+was only on the following morning that she noticed the
+disappearance of that photograph.  What did it mean?  Careful
+examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he
+had gone for good.  As that conclusion hardened she stood quite
+still in the middle of his dressing-room, with all the drawers
+pulled out, to try and realise what she was feeling.  By no means
+easy!  Though he was 'the limit' he was yet her property, and for
+the life of her she could not but feel the poorer.  To be widowed
+yet not widowed at forty-two; with four children; made conspicuous,
+an object of commiseration!  Gone to the arms of a Spanish Jade!
+Memories, feelings, which she had thought quite dead, revived
+within her, painful, sullen, tenacious.  Mechanically she closed
+drawer after drawer, went to her bed, lay on it, and buried her
+face in the pillows.  She did not cry.  What was the use of that?
+When she got off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only
+one thing could do her good, and that was to have Val home.  He--
+her eldest boy--who was to go to Oxford next month at James'
+expense, was at Littlehampton taking his final gallops with his
+trainer for Smalls, as he would have phrased it following his
+father's diction.  She caused a telegram to be sent to him.
+
+"I must see about his clothes," she said to Imogen; "I can't have
+him going up to Oxford all anyhow.  Those boys are so particular."
+
+"Val's got heaps of things," Imogen answered.
+
+"I know; but they want overhauling.  I hope he'll come."
+
+"He'll come like a shot, Mother.  But he'll probably skew his
+Exam."
+
+"I can't help that," said Winifred.  "I want him."
+
+With an innocent shrewd look at her mother's face, Imogen kept
+silence.  It was father, of course!  Val did come 'like a shot' at
+six o'clock.
+
+Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young
+Publius Valerius Dartie.  A youth so named could hardly turn out
+otherwise.  When he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits,
+and the craving for distinction, had determined that her children
+should have names such as no others had ever had.  (It was a mercy-
+-she felt now--that she had just not named Imogen Thisbe.) But it
+was to George Forsyte, always a wag, that Val's christening was
+due.  It so happened that Dartie dining with him, a week after the
+birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this aspiration of
+Winifred's.
+
+"Call him Cato," said George, "it'll be damned piquant!"  He had
+just won a tenner on a horse of that name.
+
+"Cato!" Dartie had replied--they were a little 'on' as the phrase
+was even in those days--"it's not a Christian name."
+
+"Halo you!" George called to a waiter in knee breeches.  "Bring me
+the Encyc'pedia Brit. from the Library, letter C."
+
+The waiter brought it.
+
+"Here you are!" said George, pointing with his cigar: "Cato Publius
+Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia.  That's what you want.  Publius
+Valerius is Christian enough."
+
+Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred.  She had been
+charmed.  It was so 'chic.'  And Publius Valerius became the baby's
+name, though it afterwards transpired that they had got hold of the
+inferior Cato.  In 1890, however, when little Publius was nearly
+ten, the word 'chic' went out of fashion, and sobriety came in;
+Winifred began to have doubts.  They were confirmed by little
+Publius himself who returned from his first term at school com-
+plaining that life was a burden to him--they called him Pubby.
+Winifred--a woman of real decision--promptly changed his school and
+his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.
+
+At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth,
+light eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile, considerable
+knowledge of what he should not know, and no experience of what he
+ought to do.  Few boys had more narrowly escaped being expelled--
+the engaging rascal.  After kissing his mother and pinching Imogen,
+he ran upstairs three at a time, and came down four, dressed for
+dinner.  He was, awfully sorry, but his 'trainer,' who had come up
+too, had asked him to dine at the Oxford and Cambridge; it wouldn't
+do to miss--the old chap would be hurt.  Winifred let him go with
+an unhappy pride.  She had wanted him at home, but it was very nice
+to know that his tutor was so fond of him.  He went out with a wink
+at Imogen, saying: "I say, Mother, could I have two plover's eggs
+when I come in?--cook's got some.  They top up so jolly well.  Oh!
+and look here--have you any money?--I had to borrow a fiver from
+old Snobby."
+
+Winifred looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:
+
+"My dear, you are naughty about money.  But you shouldn't pay him
+to-night, anyway; you're his guest.  "How nice and slim he looked
+in his white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!
+
+"Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I
+ought to stand the tickets; he's always hard up, you know."
+
+Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:
+
+"Well, perhaps you'd better pay him, but you mustn't stand the
+tickets too."
+
+Val pocketed the fiver.
+
+"If I do, I can't," he said.  "Good-night, Mum!"
+
+He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously, sniffing
+the air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into covert.  Jolly
+good biz!  After that mouldy old slow hole down there!
+
+He found his 'tutor,' not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but
+at the Goat's Club.  This 'tutor' was a year older than himself, a
+good-looking youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a
+small mouth, an oval face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree,
+one of those young men who without effort establish moral
+ascendancy over their companions.  He had missed being expelled
+from school a year before Val, had spent that year at Oxford, and
+Val could almost see a halo round his head.  His name was Crum, and
+no one could get through money quicker.  It seemed to be his only
+aim in life--dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the Forsyte
+would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the value for that
+money was.
+
+They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the Club smoking
+cigars, with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into stalls
+at the Liberty.  For Val the sound of comic songs, the sight of
+lovely legs were fogged and interrupted by haunting fears that he
+would never equal Crum's quiet dandyism.  His idealism was roused;
+and when that is so, one is never quite at ease.  Surely he had too
+wide a mouth, not the best cut of waistcoat, no braid on his
+trousers, and his lavender gloves had no thin black stitchings down
+the back.  Besides, he laughed too much--Crum never laughed, he
+only smiled, with his regular dark brows raised a little so that
+they formed a gable over his just drooped lids.  No! he would never
+be Crum's equal.  All the same it was a jolly good show, and
+Cynthia Dark simply ripping.  Between the acts Crum regaled him
+with particulars of Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge
+became Val's that, if he liked, Crum could go behind.  He simply
+longed to say: "I say, take me!" but dared not, because of his
+deficiencies; and this made the last act or two almost miserable.
+On coming out Crum said: "It's half an hour before they close;
+let's go on to the Pandemonium."  They took a hansom to travel the
+hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because they
+were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade.  It was in
+these little things, this utter negligence of money that Crum had
+such engaging polish.  The ballet was on its last legs and--night,
+and the traffic of the Promenade was suffering for the moment.  Men
+and women were crowded in three rows against the barrier.  The
+whirl and dazzle on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco
+fumes and women's scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which
+belongs to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism.
+He looked admiringly in a young woman's face, saw she was not
+young, and quickly looked away.  Shades of Cynthia Dark!  The young
+woman's arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent of musk
+and mignonette.  Val looked round the corner of his lashes. Perhaps
+she was young, after all.  Her foot trod on his; she begged his
+pardon.  He said:
+
+"Not at all; jolly good ballet, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm tired of it; aren't you?"
+
+Young Val smiled--his wide, rather charming smile.  Beyond that he
+did not go--not yet convinced.  The Forsyte in him stood out for
+greater certainty.  And on the stage the ballet whirled its
+kaleidoscope of snow-white, salmon-pink, and emerald-green and
+violet and seemed suddenly to freeze into a stilly spangled
+pyramid.  Applause broke out, and it was over!  Maroon curtains had
+cut it off.  The semi-circle of men and women round the barrier
+broke up, the young woman's arm pressed his.  A little way off
+disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation; Val
+stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking towards
+it.  Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm.  The one in
+the centre wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a dark
+moustache; he reeled a little as he walked.  Crum's voice said slow
+and level: "Look at that bounder, he's screwed!"  Val turned to
+look.  The 'bounder' had disengaged his arm, and was pointing
+straight at them.  Crum's voice, level as ever, said:
+
+"He seems to know you!"  The 'bounder' spoke:
+
+"H'llo!" he said.  "You f'llows, look!  There's my young rascal of
+a son!"
+
+Val saw.  It was his father!  He could have sunk into the crimson
+carpet.  It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his
+father was 'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by
+heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true.  Yes,
+his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink
+carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk.  And without a word
+he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the Promenade.
+He heard the word, "Val!" behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted
+steps past the 'chuckersout,' into the Square.
+
+To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience
+a young man can go through.  It seemed to Val, hurrying away, that
+his career had ended before it had begun.  How could he go up to
+Oxford now amongst all those chaps, those splendid friends of
+Crum's, who would know that his father was a 'bounder'!  And
+suddenly he hated Crum.  Who the devil was Crum, to say that?  If
+Crum had been beside him at that moment, he would certainly have
+been jostled off the pavement.  His own father--his own!  A choke
+came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands down deep into his
+overcoat pockets.  Damn Crum!  He conceived the wild idea of
+running back and fending his father, taking him by the arm and
+walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up at once and
+pursued his way down Piccadilly.  A young woman planted herself
+before him.  "Not so angry, darling!"  He shied, dodged her, and
+suddenly became quite cool.  If Crum ever said a word, he would
+jolly well punch his head, and there would be an end of it.  He
+walked a hundred yards or more, contented with that thought, then
+lost its comfort utterly.  It wasn't simple like that!  He
+remembered how, at school, when some parent came down who did not
+pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow afterwards.  It was
+one of those things nothing could remove.  Why had his mother
+married his father, if he was a 'bounder'?  It was bitterly unfair-
+-jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a 'bounder' for father.
+The worst of it was that now Crum had spoken the word, he realised
+that he had long known subconsciously that his father was not 'the
+clean potato.'  It was the beastliest thing that had ever happened
+to him--beastliest thing that had ever happened to any fellow!
+And, down-hearted as he had never yet been, he came to Green
+Street, and let himself in with a smuggled latch-key.  In the
+dining-room his plover's eggs were set invitingly, with some cut
+bread and butter, and a little whisky at the bottom of a decanter--
+just enough, as Winifred had thought, for him to feel himself a
+man.  It made him sick to look at them, and he went upstairs.
+
+Winifred heard him pass, and thought: 'The dear boy's in.  Thank
+goodness!  If he takes after his father I don't know what I shall
+do!  But he won't he's like me.  Dear Val!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS
+
+
+When Soames entered his sister's little Louis Quinze drawing-room,
+with its small balcony, always flowered with hanging geraniums in
+the summer, and now with pots of Lilium Auratum, he was struck by
+the immutability of human affairs.  It looked just the same as on
+his first visit to the newly married Darties twenty-one years ago.
+He had chosen the furniture himself, and so completely that no
+subsequent purchase had ever been able to change the room's
+atmosphere.  Yes, he had founded his sister well, and she had
+wanted it.  Indeed, it said a great deal for Winifred that after
+all this time with Dartie she remained well-founded.  From the
+first Soames had nosed out Dartie's nature from underneath the
+plausibility, savoir faire, and good looks which had dazzled
+Winifred, her mother, and even James, to the extent of permitting
+the fellow to marry his daughter without bringing anything but
+shares of no value into settlement.
+
+Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at her
+Buhl bureau with a letter in her hand.  She rose and came towards
+him.  Tall as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well tailored,
+something in her face disturbed Soames.  She crumpled the letter in
+her hand, but seemed to change her mind and held it out to him.  He
+was her lawyer as well as her brother.
+
+Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:
+
+
+'You will not get chance to insult in my own again.  I am leaving
+country to-morrow.  It's played out.  I'm tired of being insulted
+by you.  You've brought on yourself.  No self-respecting man can
+stand it.  I shall not ask you for anything again.  Good-bye.  I
+took the photograph of the two girls.  Give them my love.  I don't
+care what your family say.  It's all their doing.  I'm going to
+live new life.
+
+'M.D.'
+
+
+This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry.  He
+looked at Winifred--the splotch had clearly come from her; and he
+checked the words: 'Good riddance!'  Then it occurred to him that
+with this letter she was entering that very state which he himself
+so earnestly desired to quit--the state of a Forsyte who was not
+divorced.
+
+Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a little
+gold-topped bottle.  A dull commiseration, together with a vague
+sense of injury, crept about Soames' heart.  He had come to her to
+talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the
+same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy
+from him.  It was always like that!  Nobody ever seemed to think
+that he had troubles and interests of his own.  He folded up the
+letter with the splotch inside, and said:
+
+"What's it all about, now?"
+
+Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.
+
+"Do you think he's really gone, Soames?  You see the state he was
+in when he wrote that."
+
+Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by
+pretending that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:
+
+"I shouldn't think so.  I might find out at his Club."
+
+"If George is there," said Winifred, "he would know."
+
+"George?" said Soames; "I saw him at his father's funeral."
+
+"Then he's sure to be there."
+
+Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister's acumen, said
+grudgingly: "Well, I'll go round.  Have you said anything in Park
+Lane?"
+
+"I've told Emily," returned Winifred, who retained that 'chic' way
+of describing her mother.  "Father would have a fit."
+
+Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James.  With
+another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his sister's
+exact position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly.  The evening
+was drawing in--a touch of chill in the October haze.  He walked
+quickly, with his close and concentrated air.  He must get through,
+for he wished to dine in Soho.  On hearing from the hall porter at
+the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie had not been in to-day, he looked at the
+trusty fellow and decided only to ask if Mr. George Forsyte was in
+the Club.  He was.  Soames, who always looked askance at his cousin
+George, as one inclined to jest at his expense, followed the page-
+boy, slightly reassured by the thought that George had just lost
+his father.  He must have come in for about thirty thousand, be-
+sides what he had under that settlement of Roger's, which had
+avoided death duty.  He found George in a bow-window, staring out
+across a half-eaten plate of muffins.  His tall, bulky, black-
+clothed figure loomed almost threatening, though preserving still
+the supernatural neatness of the racing man.  With a faint grin on
+his fleshy face, he said:
+
+"Hallo, Soames!  Have a muffin?"
+
+"No, thanks," murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the
+desire to say something suitable and sympathetic, added:
+
+"How's your mother?"
+
+"Thanks," said George; "so-so.  Haven't seen you for ages.  You
+never go racing.  How's the City?"
+
+Soames, scenting the approach of a jest, closed up, and answered:
+
+"I wanted to ask you about Dartie.  I hear he's...."
+
+"Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola.  Good for
+Winifred and the little Darties.  He's a treat."
+
+Soames nodded.  Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie
+made them kin.
+
+"Uncle James'll sleep in his bed now," resumed George; "I suppose
+he's had a lot off you, too."
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"Ah! You saw him further," said George amicably.  "He's a real
+rouser.  Young Val will want a bit of looking after.  I was always
+sorry for Winifred.  She's a plucky woman."
+
+Again Soames nodded.  "I must be getting back to her," he said;
+"she just wanted to know for certain.  We may have to take steps.
+I suppose there's no mistake?"
+
+"It's quite O.K.," said George--it was he who invented so many of
+those quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources.
+"He was drunk as a lord last night; but he went off all right this
+morning.  His ship's the Tuscarora;" and, fishing out a card, he
+read mockingly:
+
+"'Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.'  I should
+hurry up with the steps, if I were you.  He fairly fed me up last
+night."
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "but it's not always easy."  Then, conscious
+from George's eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own
+affair, he got up, and held out his hand.  George rose too.
+
+"Remember me to Winifred....  You'll enter her for the Divorce
+Stakes straight off if you ask me."
+
+Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway.  George
+had seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked big
+and lonely in those black clothes.  Soames had never known him so
+subdued.  'I suppose he feels it in a way,' he thought.  'They must
+have about fifty thousand each, all told.  They ought to keep the
+estate together.  If there's a war, house property will go down.
+Uncle Roger was a good judge, though.'  And the face of Annette
+rose before him in the darkening street; her brown hair and her
+blue eyes with their dark lashes, her fresh lips and cheeks, dewy
+and blooming in spite of London, her perfect French figure.  'Take
+steps!' he thought.  Re-entering Winifred's house he encountered
+Val, and they went in together.  An idea had occurred to Soames.
+His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to
+go down and see him at Robin Hill.  Robin Hill!  The odd--the very
+odd feeling those words brought back!  Robin Hill--the house
+Bosinney had built for him and Irene--the house they had never
+lived in--the fatal house!  And Jolyon lived there now!  H'm!  And
+suddenly he thought: 'They say he's got a boy at Oxford!  Why not
+take young Val down and introduce them!  It's an excuse!  Less
+bald--very much less bald!' So, as they went upstairs, he said to
+Val:
+
+"You've got a cousin at Oxford; you've never met him.  I should
+like to take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and
+introduce you.  You'll find it useful."
+
+Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames
+clinched it.
+
+"I'll call for you after lunch.  It's in the country--not far;
+you'll enjoy it."
+
+On the threshold of the drawing-room he recalled with an effort
+that the steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment,
+not himself.
+
+Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.
+
+"It's quite true," he said; "he's gone to Buenos Aires, started
+this morning--we'd better have him shadowed when he lands.  I'll
+cable at once.  Otherwise we may have a lot of expense.  The sooner
+these things are done the better.  I'm always regretting that I
+didn't..." he stopped, and looked sidelong at the silent Winifred.
+"By the way," he went on, "can you prove cruelty?"
+
+Winifred said in a dull voice:
+
+"I don't know.  What is cruelty?"
+
+"Well, has he struck you, or anything?"
+
+Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.
+
+"He twisted my arm.  Or would pointing a pistol count?  Or being
+too drunk to undress himself, or--No--I can't bring in the
+children."
+
+"No," said Soames; "no!  I wonder!  Of course, there's legal
+separation--we can get that.  But separation!  Um!"
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Winifred desolately.
+
+"That he can't touch you, or you him; you're both of you married
+and unmarried."  And again he grunted.  What was it, in fact, but
+his own accursed position, legalised!  No, he would not put her
+into that!
+
+"It must be divorce," he said decisively;" failing cruelty, there's
+desertion.  There's a way of shortening the two years, now.  We get
+the Court to give us restitution of conjugal rights.  Then if he
+doesn't obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six months' time.
+Of course you don't want him back.  But they won't know that.
+Still, there's the risk that he might come.  I'd rather try
+cruelty."
+
+Winifred shook her head.  "It's so beastly."
+
+"Well," Soames murmured, "perhaps there isn't much risk so long as
+he's infatuated and got money.  Don't say anything to anybody, and
+don't pay any of his debts."
+
+Winifred sighed.  In spite of all she had been through, the sense
+of loss was heavy on her.  And this idea of not paying his debts
+any more brought it home to her as nothing else yet had.  Some
+richness seemed to have gone out of life.  Without her husband,
+without her pearls, without that intimate sense that she made a
+brave show above the domestic whirlpool, she would now have to face
+the world.  She felt bereaved indeed.
+
+And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put more
+than his usual warmth.
+
+"I have to go down to Robin Hill to-morrow," he said, "to see young
+Jolyon on business.  He's got a boy at Oxford.  I'd like to take
+Val with me and introduce him.  Come down to 'The Shelter' for the
+week-end and bring the children.  Oh! by the way, no, that won't
+do; I've got some other people coming."  So saying, he left her and
+turned towards Soho.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOHO
+
+
+Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London,
+Soho is perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit.  'So-ho, my
+wild one!'  George would have said if he had seen his cousin going
+there.  Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians,
+tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people
+looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the British
+Body Politic.  Yet has it haphazard proprietary instincts of its
+own, and a certain possessive prosperity which keeps its rents up
+when those of other quarters go down.  For long years Soames'
+acquaintanceship with Soho had been confined to its Western
+bastion, Wardour Street.  Many bargains had he picked up there.
+Even during those seven years at Brighton after Bosinney's death
+and Irene's flight, he had bought treasures there sometimes, though
+he had no place to put them; for when the conviction that his wife
+had gone for good at last became firm within him, he had caused a
+board to be put up in Montpellier Square:
+
+FOR SALE
+
+THE LEASE OF THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE
+
+Enquire of Messrs.  Lesson and Tukes,
+Court Street, Belgravia.
+
+
+It had sold within a week--that desirable residence, in the shadow
+of whose perfection a man and a woman--had eaten their hearts out.
+
+Of a misty January evening, just before the board was taken down,
+Soames had gone there once more, and stood against the Square
+railings, looking at its unlighted windows, chewing the cud of
+possessive memories which had turned so bitter in the mouth.  Why
+had she never loved him?  Why?  She had been given all she had
+wanted, and in return had given him, for three long years, all he
+had wanted--except, indeed, her heart.  He had uttered a little
+involuntary groan, and a passing policeman had glanced suspiciously
+at him who no longer possessed the right to enter that green door
+with the carved brass knocker beneath the board 'For Sale!'  A
+choking sensation had attacked his throat, and he had hurried away
+into the mist.  That evening he had gone to Brighton to live....
+
+Approaching Malta Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne, where
+Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her accounts,
+Soames thought with wonder of those seven years at Brighton.  How
+had he managed to go on so long in that town devoid of the scent of
+sweetpeas, where he had not even space to put his treasures?  True,
+those had been years with no time at all for looking at them--years
+of almost passionate money-making, during which Forsyte, Bustard
+and Forsyte had become solicitors to more limited Companies than
+they could properly attend to.  Up to the City of a morning in a
+Pullman car, down from the City of an evening in a Pullman car.
+Law papers again after dinner, then the sleep of the tired, and up
+again next morning.  Saturday to Monday was spent at his Club in
+town--curious reversal of customary procedure, based on the deep
+and careful instinct that while working so hard he needed sea air
+to and from the station twice a day, and while resting must indulge
+his domestic affections.  The Sunday visit to his family in Park
+Lane, to Timothy's, and to Green Street; the occasional visits
+elsewhere had seemed to him as necessary to health as sea air on
+weekdays.  Even since his migration to Mapledurham he had main-
+tained those habits until--he had known Annette.
+
+Whether Annette had produced the revolution in his outlook, or that
+outlook had produced Annette, he knew no more than we know where a
+circle begins.  It was intricate and deeply involved with the
+growing consciousness that property without anyone to leave it to
+is the negation of true Forsyteism.  To have an heir, some
+continuance of self, who would begin where he left off--ensure, in
+fact, that he would not leave off--had quite obsessed him for the
+last year and more.  After buying a bit of Wedgwood one evening in
+April, he had dropped into Malta Street to look at a house of his
+father's which had been turned into a restaurant--a risky pro-
+ceeding, and one not quite in accordance with the terms of the
+lease.  He had stared for a little at the outside  painted a good
+cream colour, with two peacock-blue tubs containing little bay-
+trees in a recessed doorway--and at the words 'Restaurant Bretagne'
+above them in gold letters, rather favourably impressed.  Entering,
+he had noticed that several people were already seated at little
+round green tables with little pots of fresh flowers on them and
+Brittany-ware plates, and had asked of a trim waitress to see the
+proprietor.  They had shown him into a back room, where a girl was
+sitting at a simple bureau covered with papers, and a small round,
+table was laid for two.  The impression of cleanliness, order, and
+good taste was confirmed when the girl got up, saying, "You wish to
+see Maman, Monsieur?" in a broken accent.
+
+"Yes," Soames had answered, "I represent your landlord; in fact,
+I'm his son."   "Won't you sit down, sir, please?  Tell Maman to
+come to this gentleman."
+
+He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed
+business instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was remarkably
+pretty--so remarkably pretty that his eyes found a difficulty in
+leaving her face.  When she moved to put a chair for him, she
+swayed in a curious subtle way, as if she had been put together by
+someone with a special secret skill; and her face and neck, which
+was a little bared, looked as fresh as if they had been sprayed
+with dew.  Probably at this moment Soames decided that the lease
+had not been violated; though to himself and his father he based
+the decision on the efficiency of those illicit adaptations in the
+building, on the signs of prosperity, and the obvious business
+capacity of Madame Lamotte.  He did not, however, neglect to leave
+certain matters to future consideration, which had necessitated
+further visits, so that the little back room had become quite
+accustomed to his spare, not unsolid, but unobtrusive figure, and
+his pale, chinny face with clipped moustache and dark hair not yet
+grizzling at the sides.
+
+"Un Monsieur tres distingue," Madame Lamotte found him; and
+presently, "Tres amical, tres gentil," watching his eyes upon her
+daughter.
+
+She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired
+Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect
+confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their
+knowledge of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank
+balances.
+
+After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits
+ceased--without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like
+all Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a
+born empiricist.  But it was this change in his mode of life which
+had gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to
+alter his condition from that of the unmarried married man to that
+of the married man remarried.
+
+Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899,
+he bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of the
+Dreyfus case--a question which he had always found useful in making
+closer acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her daughter, who
+were Catholic and anti-Dreyfusard.
+
+Scanning those columns, Soames found nothing French, but noticed a
+general fall on the Stock Exchange and an ominous leader about the
+Transvaal.  He entered, thinking: 'War's a certainty.  I shall sell
+my consols.'  Not that he had many, personally, the rate of
+interest was too wretched; but he should advise his Companies--
+consols would assuredly go down.  A look, as he passed the doorways
+of the restaurant, assured him that business was good as ever, and
+this, which in April would have pleased him, now gave him a certain
+uneasiness.  If the steps which he had to take ended in his
+marrying Annette, he would rather see her mother safely back in
+France, a move to which the prosperity of the Restaurant Bretagne
+might become an obstacle.  He would have to buy them out, of
+course, for French people only came to England to make money; and
+it would mean a higher price.  And then that peculiar sweet
+sensation at the back of his throat, and a slight thumping about
+the heart, which he always experienced at the door of the little
+room, prevented his thinking how much it would cost.
+
+Going in, he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing
+through the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her hands
+up to her hair.  It was the attitude in which of all others he
+admired her--so beautifully straight and rounded and supple.  And
+he said:
+
+"I just came in to talk to your mother about pulling down that
+partition.  No, don't call her."
+
+"Monsieur will have supper with us?  It will be ready in ten
+minutes."  Soames, who still held her hand, was overcome by an
+impulse which surprised him.
+
+"You look so pretty to-night," he said, "so very pretty.  Do you
+know how pretty you look, Annette?"
+
+Annette withdrew her hand, and blushed.  "Monsieur is very good."
+
+"Not a bit good," said Soames, and sat down gloomily.
+
+Annette made a little expressive gesture with her hands; a smile
+was crinkling her red lips untouched by salve.
+
+And, looking at those lips, Soames said:
+
+"Are you happy over here, or do you want to go back to France?"
+
+"Oh, I like London.  Paris, of course.  But London is better than
+Orleans, and the English country is so beautiful.  I have been to
+Richmond last Sunday."
+
+Soames went through a moment of calculating struggle.  Mapledurham!
+Dared he?  After all, dared he go so far as that, and show her what
+there was to look forward to!  Still!  Down there one could say
+things.  In this room it was impossible.
+
+"I want you and your mother," he said suddenly, "to come for the
+afternoon next Sunday.  My house is on the river, it's not too late
+in this weather; and I can show you some good pictures.  What do
+you say?"
+
+Annette clasped her hands.
+
+"It will be lovelee.  The river is so beautiful"
+
+"That's understood, then.  I'll ask Madame."
+
+He need say no more to her this evening, and risk giving himself
+away.  But had he not already said too much?  Did one ask
+restaurant proprietors with pretty daughters down to one's country
+house without design?  Madame Lamotte would see, if Annette didn't.
+Well! there was not much that Madame did not see.  Besides, this
+was the second time he had stayed to supper with them; he owed them
+hospitality.
+
+Walking home towards Park Lane--for he was staying at his father's-
+-with the impression of Annette's soft clever hand within his own,
+his thoughts were pleasant, slightly sensual, rather puzzled.  Take
+steps!  What steps?  How?  Dirty linen washed in public?  Pah!
+With his reputation for sagacity, for far-sightedness and the
+clever extrication of others, he, who stood for proprietary
+interests, to become the plaything of that Law of which he was a
+pillar!  There was something revolting in the thought!  Winifred's
+affair was bad enough!  To have a double dose of publicity in the
+family!  Would not a liaison be better than that--a liaison, and a
+son he could adopt?  But dark, solid, watchful, Madame Lamotte
+blocked the avenue of that vision.  No! that would not work.  It
+was not as if Annette could have a real passion for him; one could
+not expect that at his age.  If her mother wished, if the worldly
+advantage were manifestly great--perhaps!  If not, refusal would be
+certain.  Besides, he thought: 'I'm not a villain.  I don't want to
+hurt her; and I don't want anything underhand.  But I do want her,
+and I want a son!  There's nothing for it but divorce--somehow--
+anyhow--divorce!'  Under the shadow of the plane-trees, in the
+lamplight, he passed slowly along the railings of the Green Park.
+Mist clung there among the bluish tree shapes, beyond range of the
+lamps.  How many hundred times he had walked past those trees from
+his father's house in Park Lane, when he was quite a young man; or
+from his own house in Montpellier Square in those four years of
+married life!  And, to-night, making up his mind to free himself if
+he could of that long useless marriage tie, he took a fancy to walk
+on, in at Hyde Park Corner, out at Knightsbridge Gate, just as he
+used to when going home to Irene in the old days.  What could she
+be like now?--how had she passed the years since he last saw her,
+twelve years in all, seven already since Uncle Jolyon left her that
+money?  Was she still beautiful?  Would he know her if he saw her?
+'I've not changed much,' he thought; 'I expect she has.  She made
+me suffer.'  He remembered suddenly one night, the first on which
+he went out to dinner alone--an old Malburian dinner--the first
+year of their marriage.  With what eagerness he had hurried back;
+and, entering softly as a cat, had heard her playing.  Opening the
+drawingroom door noiselessly, he had stood watching the expression
+on her face, different from any he knew, so much more open, so
+confiding, as though to her music she was giving a heart he had
+never seen.  And he remembered how she stopped and looked round,
+how her face changed back to that which he did know, and what an
+icy shiver had gone through him, for all that the next moment he
+was fondling her shoulders.  Yes, she had made him suffer!
+Divorce!  It seemed ridiculous, after all these years of utter
+separation!  But it would have to be.  No other way!  'The
+question,' he thought with sudden realism, 'is--which of us?  She
+or me?  She deserted me.  She ought to pay for it.  There'll be
+someone, I suppose.'  Involuntarily he uttered a little snarling
+sound, and, turning, made his way back to Park Lane.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JAMES SEES VISIONS
+
+
+The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly, detained
+Soames on the inner mat.
+
+"The master's poorly, sir," he murmured.  "He wouldn't go to bed
+till you came in.  He's still in the diningroom."
+
+Soames responded in the hushed tone to which the house was now
+accustomed.
+
+"What's the matter with him, Warmson?"
+
+"Nervous, sir, I think.  Might be the funeral; might be Mrs.
+Dartie's comin' round this afternoon.  I think he overheard
+something.  I've took him in a negus.  The mistress has just gone
+up."
+
+Soames hung his hat on a mahogany stag's-horn.
+
+"All right, Warmson, you can go to bed; I'll take him up myself."
+And he passed into the dining-room.
+
+James was sitting before the fire, in a big armchair, with a
+camel-hair shawl, very light and warm, over his frock-coated
+shoulders, on to which his long white whiskers drooped.  His white
+hair, still fairly thick, glistened in the lamplight; a little
+moisture from his fixed, light-grey eyes stained the cheeks, still
+quite well coloured, and the long deep furrows running to the
+corners of the clean-shaven lips, which moved as if mumbling
+thoughts.  His long legs, thin as a crow's, in shepherd's plaid
+trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a
+spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and
+glistening tapered nails.  Beside him, on a low stool, stood a
+half-finished glass of negus, bedewed with beads of heat.  There he
+had been sitting, with intervals for meals, all day.  At eighty-
+eight he was still organically sound, but suffering terribly from
+the thought that no one ever told him anything.  It is, indeed,
+doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was being buried that
+day, for Emily had kept it from him.  She was always keeping things
+from him.  Emily was only seventy!  James had a grudge against his
+wife's youth.  He felt sometimes that he would never have married
+her if he had known that she would have so many years before her,
+when he had so few.  It was not natural.  She would live fifteen or
+twenty years after he was gone, and might spend a lot of money; she
+had always had extravagant tastes.  For all he knew she might want
+to buy one of these motor-cars.  Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and
+all the young people--they all rode those bicycles now and went off
+Goodness knew where.  And now Roger was gone.  He didn't know--
+couldn't tell!  The family was breaking up.  Soames would know how
+much his uncle had left.  Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames'
+uncle not as his own brother.  Soames!  It was more and more the
+one solid spot in a vanishing world.  Soames was careful; he was a
+warm man; but he had no one to leave his money to.  There it was!
+He didn't know!  And there was that fellow Chamberlain!  For James'
+political principles had been fixed between '70 and '85 when 'that
+rascally Radical' had been the chief thorn in the side of property
+and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion; he
+would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he
+had done with it.  A stormy petrel of a chap!  Where was Soames?
+He had gone to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep
+from him.  He knew that perfectly  well; he had seen his son's
+trousers.  Roger!  Roger in his coffin!  He remembered how, when
+they came up from school together from the West, on the box seat of
+the old Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got into the 'boot' and gone
+to sleep.  James uttered a thin cackle.  A funny fellow--Roger--an
+original!  He didn't know!  Younger than himself, and in his
+coffin!  The family was breaking up.  There was Val going to the
+university; he never came to see him now.  He would cost a pretty
+penny up there.  It was an extravagant age.  And all the pretty
+pennies that his four grandchildren would cost him danced before
+James' eyes.  He did not grudge them the money, but he grudged
+terribly the risk which the spending of that money might bring on
+them; he grudged the diminution of security.  And now that Cicely
+had married, she might be having children too.  He didn't know--
+couldn't tell!  Nobody thought of anything but spending money in
+these days, and racing about, and having what they called 'a good
+time.'  A motor-car went past the window.  Ugly great lumbering
+thing, making all that racket!  But there it was, the country
+rattling to the dogs!  People in such a hurry that they couldn't
+even care for style--a neat turnout like his barouche and bays was
+worth all those new-fangled things.  And consols at 116!  There
+must be a lot of money in the country.  And now there was this old
+Kruger!  They had tried to keep old Kruger from him.  But he knew
+better; there would be a pretty kettle of fish out there!  He had
+known how it would be when that fellow Gladstone--dead now, thank
+God! made such a mess of it after that dreadful business at Majuba.
+He shouldn't wonder if the Empire split up and went to pot.  And
+this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a full quarter of an
+hour with qualms of the most serious character.  He had eaten a
+poor lunch because of them.  But it was after lunch that the real
+disaster to his nerves occurred.  He had been dozing when he became
+aware of voices--low voices.  Ah! they never told him anything!
+Winifred's and her mother's.  "Monty!"  That fellow Dartie--always
+that fellow Dartie!  The voices had receded; and James had been
+left alone, with his ears standing up like a hare's, and fear
+creeping about his inwards.  Why did they leave him alone?  Why
+didn't they come and tell him?  And an awful thought, which through
+long years had haunted him, concreted again swiftly in his brain.
+Dartie had gone bankrupt--fraudulently bankrupt, and to save
+Winifred and the children, he--James would have to pay!  Could he--
+could Soames turn him into a limited company?  No, he couldn't!
+There it was!  With every minute before Emily came back the spectre
+fiercened.  Why, it might be forgery!  With eyes fixed on the
+doubted Turner in the centre of the wall, James suffered tortures.
+He saw Dartie in the dock, his grandchildren in the gutter, and
+himself in bed.  He saw the doubted Turner being sold at Jobson's,
+and all the majestic edifice of property in rags.  He saw in fancy
+Winifred unfashionably dressed, and heard in fancy Emily's voice
+saying: "Now, don't fuss, James!"  She was always saying: "Don't
+fuss!"  She had no nerves; he ought never to have married a woman
+eighteen years younger than himself.  Then Emily's real voice said:
+
+"Have you had a nice nap, James?"
+
+Nap!  He was in torment, and she asked him that!
+
+"What's this about Dartie?" he said, and his eyes glared at her.
+
+Emily's self-possession never deserted her.
+
+"What have you been hearing?" she asked blandly.
+
+"What's this about Dartie?" repeated James.  "He's gone bankrupt."
+
+"Fiddle!"
+
+James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his
+stork-like figure.
+
+"You never tell me anything," he said; "he's gone bankrupt."
+
+The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that
+mattered at the moment.
+
+"He has not," she answered firmly.  "He's gone to Buenos Aires."
+
+If she had said "He's gone to Mars" she could not have dealt James
+a more stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in British
+securities, could as little grasp one place as the other.
+
+"What's he gone there for?" he said.  "He's got no money.  What did
+he take?"
+
+Agitated within by Winifred's news, and goaded by the constant
+reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:
+
+"He took Winifred's pearls and a dancer."
+
+"What!" said James, and sat down.
+
+His sudden collapse alarmed her, and smoothing his forehead, she
+said:
+
+"Now, don't fuss, James!"
+
+A dusky red had spread over James' cheeks and forehead.
+
+"I paid for them," he said tremblingly; "he's a thief!  I--I knew
+how it would be.  He'll be the death of me; he ...."  Words failed
+him and he sat quite still.  Emily, who thought she knew him so
+well, was alarmed, and went towards the sideboard where she kept
+some sal volatile.  She could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit
+working in that thin, tremulous shape against the extravagance of
+the emotion called up by this outrage on Forsyte principles--the
+Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying: 'You mustn't get into a
+fantod, it'll never do.  You won't digest your lunch.  You'll have
+a fit!'All unseen by her, it was doing better work in James than
+sal volatile.
+
+"Drink this," she said.
+
+James waved it aside.
+
+"What was Winifred about," he said, "to let him take her pearls?"
+Emily perceived the crisis past.
+
+"She can have mine," she said comfortably.  "I never wear them.
+She'd better get a divorce."
+
+"There you go!" said James.  "Divorce!  We've never had a divorce
+in the family.  Where's Soames?"
+
+"He'll be in directly."
+
+"No, he won't," said James, almost fiercely; "he's at the funeral.
+You think I know nothing."
+
+"Well," said Emily with calm, "you shouldn't get into such fusses
+when we tell you things."  And plumping up his cushions, and
+putting the sal volatile beside him, she left the room.
+
+But James sat there seeing visions--of Winifred in the Divorce
+Court, and the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on
+Roger's coffin; of Val taking after his father; of the pearls he
+had paid for and would never see again; of money back at four per
+cent., and the country going to the dogs; and, as the afternoon
+wore into evening, and tea-time passed, and dinnertime, those
+visions became more and more mixed and menacing--of being told
+nothing, till he had nothing left of all his wealth, and they told
+him nothing of it.  Where was Soames?  Why didn't he come in?...
+His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it to drink, and saw
+his son standing there looking at him.  A little sigh of relief
+escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he said:
+
+"There you are!  Dartie's gone to Buenos Aires."
+
+Soames nodded.  "That's all right," he said; "good riddance."
+
+A wave of assuagement passed over James' brain.  Soames knew.
+Soames was the only one of them all who had sense.  Why couldn't he
+come and live at home?  He had no son of his own.  And he said
+plaintively:
+
+"At my age I get nervous.  I wish you were more at home, my boy."
+
+Again Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no
+understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident touched
+his father's shoulder.
+
+"They sent their love to you at Timothy's," he said.  "It went off
+all right.  I've been to see Winifred.  I'm going to take steps."
+And he thought: 'Yes, and you mustn't hear of them.'
+
+James looked up; his long white whiskers quivered, his thin throat
+between the points of his collar looked very gristly and naked.
+
+"I've been very poorly all day," he said; "they never tell me
+anything."
+
+Soames' heart twitched.
+
+"Well, it's all right.  There's nothing to worry about.  Will you
+come up now?" and he put his hand under his father's arm.
+
+James obediently and tremulously raised himself, and together they
+went slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the
+firelight, and out to the stairs.  Very slowly they ascended.
+
+"Good-night, my boy," said James at his bedroom door.
+
+"Good-night, father," answered Soames.  His hand stroked down the
+sleeve beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it,
+so thin was the arm.  And, turning away from the light in the
+opening doorway, he went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.
+
+'I want a son,' he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed;
+'I want a son.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME
+
+
+Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper
+lawn at Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled
+under it and said to Soames: "Forsyte, I've found the very place
+for your house."  Since then Swithin had dreamed, and old Jolyon
+died, beneath its branches.  And now, close to the swing,
+no-longer-young Jolyon often painted there.  Of all spots in the
+world it was perhaps the most sacred to him, for he had loved his
+father.
+
+Contemplating its great girth--crinkled and a little mossed, but
+not yet hollow--he would speculate on the passage of time.  That
+tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he
+shouldn't wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least.  His own
+fifty years were as nothing to its wood.  When the house behind it,
+which he now owned, was three hundred years of age instead of
+twelve, that tree might still be standing there, vast and hollow--
+for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it down?  A Forsyte
+might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it jealously.
+And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like coated with
+such age.  Wistaria was already about its walls--the new look had
+gone.  Would its hold its own and keep the dignity Bosinney had
+bestowed on it, or would the giant London have lapped it round and
+made it into an asylum in the midst of a jerry-built wilderness?
+Often, within and without of it, he was persuaded that Bosinney had
+been moved by the spirit when he built.  He had put his heart into
+that house, indeed!  It might even become one of the 'homes of
+England'--a rare achievement for a house in these degenerate days
+of building.  And the aesthetic spirit, moving hand in hand with
+his Forsyte sense of possessive continuity, dwelt with pride and
+pleasure on his ownership thereof.  There was the smack of
+reverence and ancestor-worship (if only for one ancestor) in his
+desire to hand this house down to his son and his son's son.  His
+father had loved the house, had loved the view, the grounds, that
+tree; his last years had been happy there, and no one had lived
+there before him.  These last eleven years at Robin Hill had formed
+in Jolyon's life as a painter, the important period of success.  He
+was now in the very van of water-colour art, hanging on the line
+everywhere.  His drawings fetched high prices.  Specialising in
+that one medium with the tenacity of his breed, he had 'arrived'-
+-rather late, but not too late for a member of the family which
+made a point of living for ever.  His art had really deepened and
+improved.  In conformity with his position he had grown a short
+fair beard, which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his
+Forsyte chin; his brown face had lost the warped expression of his
+ostracised period--he looked, if anything, younger.  The loss of
+his wife in 1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which
+turn out in the end for the good of all.  He had, indeed, loved her
+to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become
+increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous
+even of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint
+that he could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to
+everyone, and better dead.'  He had mourned her sincerely, but his
+face had looked younger since she died.  If she could only have
+believed that she made him happy, how much happier would the twenty
+years of their companionship have been!
+
+June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly
+taken her own mother's place; and ever since old Jolyon died she
+had been established in a sort of studio in London.  But she had
+come back to Robin Hill on her stepmother's death, and gathered the
+reins there into her small decided hands.  Jolly was then at
+Harrow; Holly still learning from Mademoiselle Beauce.  There had
+been nothing to keep Jolyon at home, and he had removed his grief
+and his paint-box abroad.  There he had wandered, for the most part
+in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in Paris.  He had stayed
+there several months, and come back with the younger face and the
+short fair beard.  Essentially a man who merely lodged in any
+house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign at Robin
+Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where and when
+he liked.  She was inclined, it is true, to regard the house rather
+as an asylum for her proteges! but his own outcast days had filled
+Jolyon for ever with sympathy towards an outcast, and June's 'lame
+ducks' about the place did not annoy him.  By all means let her
+have them down--and feed them up; and though his slightly cynical
+humour perceived that they ministered to his daughter's love of
+domination as well as moved her warm heart, he never ceased to
+admire her for having so many ducks.  He fell, indeed, year by year
+into a more and more detached and brotherly attitude towards his
+own son and daughters, treating them with a sort of whimsical
+equality.  When he went down to Harrow to see Jolly, he never quite
+knew which of them was the elder, and would sit eating cherries
+with him out of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical
+smile twisting up an eyebrow and curling his lips a little.  And he
+was always careful to have money in his pocket, and to be modish in
+his dress, so that his son need not blush for him.  They were
+perfect friends, but never seemed to have occasion for verbal
+confidences, both having the competitive self-consciousness of
+Forsytes.  They knew they would stand by each other in scrapes, but
+there  was no need to talk about it.  Jolyon had a striking horror-
+-partly original sin, but partly the result of his early
+immorality--of the moral attitude.  The most he could ever have
+said to his son would have been:  "Look here, old man; don't forget
+you're a gentleman," and then have wondered whimsically whether
+that was not a snobbish sentiment.  The great cricket match was
+perhaps the most searching and awkward time they annually went
+through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton.  They would be
+particularly careful during that match, continually saying:
+"Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!"
+to each other, when some disaster at which their hearts bounded
+happened to the opposing  school.  And Jolyon would wear a grey top
+hat, instead of his usual soft one, to save his son's feelings, for
+a black top hat he could not stomach.  When Jolly went up to
+Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused, humble, and a little
+anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these youths who
+seemed so much more assured and old than himself.  He often
+thought, 'Glad I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing
+at Lloyds--'it's so innocuous.  You can't look down on a painter--
+you can't take him seriously enough.'  For Jolly, who had a sort of
+natural lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who
+secretly amused his father.  The boy had fair hair which curled a
+little, and his grandfather's deepset iron-grey eyes.  He was
+well-built and very upright, and always pleased Jolyon's aesthetic
+sense, so that he was a tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are
+of those of their own sex whom they admire physically.  On that
+occasion, however, he actually did screw up his courage to give his
+son advice, and this was it:
+
+"Look here, old man, you're bound to get into debt; mind you come
+to me at once.  Of course, I'll always pay them.  But you might
+remember that one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays
+one's own way.  And don't ever borrow, except from me, will you?"
+
+And Jolly had said:
+
+"All right, Dad, I won't," and he never had.
+
+"And there's just one other thing.  I don't know much about
+morality and that, but there is this: It's always worth while
+before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt
+another person more than is absolutely necessary."
+
+Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had squeezed
+his father's hand.  And Jolyon had thought: 'I wonder if I had the
+right to say that?'  He always had a sort of dread of losing the
+dumb confidence they had in each other; remembering how for long
+years he had lost his own father's, so that there had been nothing
+between them but love at a great distance.  He under-estimated, no
+doubt, the change in the spirit of the age since he himself went up
+to Cambridge in '65; and perhaps he underestimated, too, his boy's
+power of understanding that he was tolerant to the very bone.  It
+was that tolerance of his, and possibly his scepticism, which ever
+made his relations towards June so queerly defensive.  She was such
+a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly well; wanted things
+so inexorably until she got them--and then, indeed, often dropped
+them like a hot potato.  Her mother had been like that, whence had
+come all those tears.  Not that his incompatibility with his
+daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs.
+Young Jolyon.  One could be amused where a daughter was concerned;
+in a wife's case one could not be amused.  To see June set her
+heart and jaw on a thing until she got it was all right, because it
+was never anything which interfered fundamentally with Jolyon's
+liberty--the one thing on which his jaw was also absolutely rigid,
+a considerable jaw, under that short grizzling beard.  Nor was
+there ever any necessity for real heart-to-heart encounters.  One
+could break away into irony--as indeed he often had to.  But the
+real trouble with June was that she had never appealed to his
+aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her red-gold hair
+and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the Berserker in
+her spirit.  It was very different with Holly, soft and quiet, shy
+and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere.  He watched
+this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with
+extraordinary interest.  Would she come out a swan?  With her
+sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark
+lashes, she might, or she might not.  Only this last year had he
+been able to guess.  Yes, she would be a swan--rather a dark one,
+always a shy one, but an authentic swan.  She was eighteen now, and
+Mademoiselle Beauce was gone--the excellent lady had removed, after
+eleven years haunted by her continuous reminiscences of the 'well-
+brrred little Tayleurs,' to another family whose bosom would now be
+agitated by her reminiscences of the 'well-brrred little Forsytes.'
+She had taught Holly to speak French like herself.
+
+Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his
+younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the
+afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him
+which caused his eyebrows to go up:
+
+
+        Mr. SOAMES FORSYTE
+
+THE SHELTER,          CONNOISSEURS CLUB,
+MAPLEDURHAM.          ST. JAMES'S.
+
+
+But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again ....
+
+To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a
+little daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved
+father lying peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never
+likely to be, forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man
+as Jolyon.  A sense as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and
+about the end of one whose life had been so well-ordered, balanced,
+and above-board.  It seemed incredible that his father could thus
+have vanished without, as it were, announcing his intention,
+without last words to his son, and due farewells.  And those
+incoherent allusions of little Holly to 'the lady in grey,' of
+Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded) involved all
+things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father's will
+and the codicil thereto.  It had been his duty as executor of that
+will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her
+life interest in fifteen thousand pounds.  He had called on her to
+explain that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to
+meet the charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of
+L430 odd a year, clear of income tax.  This was but the third time
+he had seen his cousin Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his
+wife, of which he was not quite sure.  He remembered having seen
+her sitting in the Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney--a
+passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of Titian's 'Heavenly
+Love,' and again, when, charged by his father, he had gone to
+Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's death was
+known.  He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
+drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing
+from wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the
+compassion he had felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are
+not at home!" and the slam of the front door.
+
+This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from
+that warp of wild hope and despair.  Looking at her, he thought:
+'Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!'  And the
+strange story of his father's Indian summer became slowly clear to
+him.  She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes.
+"He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don't know why.  He looked so
+beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the tree; it was
+I who first came on him sitting there, you know.  Such a lovely
+day.  I don't think an end could have been happier.  We should all
+like to go out like that."  'Quite right I' he had thought.  'We
+should all a like to go out in full summer with beauty stepping
+towards us across a lawn.'  And looking round the little, almost
+empty drawing-room, he had asked her what she was going to do now.
+"I am going to live again a little, Cousin Jolyon.  It's wonderful
+to have money of one's own.  I've never had any.  I shall keep this
+flat, I think; I'm used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy."
+"Exactly!"  Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling
+lips; and he had gone away thinking: 'A fascinating woman!  What a
+waste!  I'm glad the Dad left her that money.'  He had not seen her
+again, but every quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it to
+her bank, with a note to the Chelsea flat to say that he had done
+so; and always he had received a note in acknowledgment, generally
+from the flat, but sometimes from Italy; so that her personality
+had become embodied in slightly scented grey paper, an upright fine
+handwriting, and the words, 'Dear Cousin Jolyon.'  Man of property
+that he now was, the slender cheque he signed often gave rise to
+the thought: 'Well, I suppose she just manages'; sliding into a
+vague wonder how she was faring otherwise in a world of men not
+wont to let beauty go unpossessed.  At first Holly had spoken of
+her sometimes, but 'ladies in grey' soon fade from children's
+memories; and the tightening of June's lips in those first weeks
+after her grandfather's death whenever her former friend's name was
+mentioned, had discouraged allusion.  Only once, indeed, had June
+spoken definitely: "I've forgiven her.  I'm frightfully glad she's
+independent now...."
+
+On receiving Soames' card, Jolyon said to the maid--for he could
+not abide butlers--"  Show him into the study, please, and say I'll
+be there in a minute"; and then he looked at Holly and asked:
+
+"Do you remember 'the lady in grey,' who used to give you music-
+lessons?"
+
+"Oh yes, why?  Has she come?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a coat,
+was silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not for those
+young ears.  His face, in fact, became whimsical perplexity
+incarnate while he journeyed towards the study.
+
+Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at
+the oak tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he
+thought: 'Who's that boy?  Surely they never had a child.'
+
+The elder figure turned.  The meeting of those two Forsytes of the
+second generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in
+the house built for the one and owned and occupied by the other,
+was marked by subtle defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at
+cordiality.  'Has he come about his wife?' Jolyon was thinking; and
+Soames, 'How shall I begin?' while Val, brought to break the ice,
+stood negligently scrutinising this 'bearded pard' from under his
+dark, thick eyelashes.
+
+"This is Val Dartie," said Soames, "my sister's son.  He's just
+going up to Oxford.  I thought I'd like him to know your boy."
+
+"Ah!  I'm sorry Jolly's away.  What college?"
+
+"B.N.C.," replied Val.
+
+"Jolly's at the 'House,' but he'll be delighted to look you up."
+
+"Thanks awfully."
+
+"Holly's in--if you could put up with a female relation, she'd show
+you round.  You'll find her in the hall if you go through the
+curtains.  I was just painting her."
+
+With another "Thanks, awfully!"  Val vanished, leaving the two
+cousins with the ice unbroken.
+
+"I see you've some drawings at the 'Water Colours,'" said Soames.
+
+Jolyon winced.  He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family at
+large for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his mind
+with Frith's 'Derby Day' and Landseer prints.  He had heard from
+June that Soames was a connoisseur, which made it worse.  He had
+become aware, too, of a curious sensation of repugnance.
+
+"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.
+
+"No," answered Soames between close lips, "not since--as a matter
+of fact, it's about that I've come.  You're her trustee, I'm told."
+
+Jolyon nodded.
+
+"Twelve years is a long time," said Soames rapidly: "I--I'm tired
+of it."
+
+Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:
+
+"Won't you smoke?"
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.
+
+"I wish to be free," said Soames abruptly.
+
+"I don't see her," murmured Jolyon through the fume of his
+cigarette.
+
+"But you know where she lives, I suppose?"
+
+Jolyon nodded.  He did not mean to give her address without
+permission.  Soames seemed to divine his thought.
+
+"I don't want her address," he said; "I know it."
+
+"What exactly do you want?"
+
+"She deserted me.  I want a divorce."
+
+"Rather late in the day, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames.  And there was a silence.
+
+"I don't know much about these things--at least, I've forgotten,"
+said Jolyon with a wry smile.  He himself had had to wait for death
+to grant him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon.  "Do you wish me
+to see her about it?"
+
+Soames raised his eyes to his cousin's face.  "I suppose there's
+someone," he said.
+
+A shrug moved Jolyon's shoulders.
+
+"I don't know at all.  I imagine you may have both lived as if the
+other were dead.  It's usual in these cases."
+
+Soames turned to the window.  A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed
+the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind.  Jolyon
+saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn
+towards the stables.  'I'm not going to run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds,' he thought.  'I must act for her.  The Dad would
+have wished that.'  And for a swift moment he seemed to see his
+father's figure in the old armchair, just beyond Soames, sitting
+with knees crossed, The Times in his hand.  It vanished.
+
+"My father was fond of her," he said quietly.
+
+"Why he should have been I don't know," Soames answered without
+looking round.  "She brought trouble to your daughter June; she
+brought trouble to everyone.  I gave her all she wanted.  I would
+have given her even--forgiveness--but she chose to leave me."
+
+In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice.
+What was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be sorry
+for him?
+
+"I can go and see her, if you like," he said.  "I suppose she might
+be glad of a divorce, but I know nothing."
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"Yes, please go.  As I say, I know her address; but I've no wish to
+see her."  His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were very
+dry.
+
+"You'll have some tea?" said Jolyon, stifling the words: 'And see
+the house.'  And he led the way into the hall.  When he had rung
+the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing
+to the wall.  He could not bear, somehow, that his work should be
+seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of the great
+room which had been designed expressly to afford wall space for his
+own pictures.  In his cousin's face, with its unseizable family
+likeness to himself, and its chinny, narrow, concentrated look,
+Jolyon saw that which moved him to the thought: 'That chap could
+never forget anything--nor ever give himself away.  He's pathetic!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE COLT AND THE FILLY
+
+
+When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was
+thinking: 'This is jolly dull!  Uncle Soames does take the bun.
+I wonder what this filly's like?'  He anticipated no pleasure from
+her society; and suddenly he saw her standing there looking at him.
+Why, she was pretty!  What luck!
+
+"I'm afraid you don't know me," he said.  "My name's Val Dartie--
+I'm once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know.  My
+mother's name was Forsyte."
+
+Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too
+shy to withdraw it, said:
+
+"I don't know any of my relations.  Are there many?"
+
+"Tons.  They're awful--most of them.  At least, I don't know--some
+of them.  One's relations always are, aren't they?"
+
+"I expect they think one awful too," said Holly.
+
+"I don't know why they should.  No one could think you awful, of
+course."
+
+Holly looked at him--the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave
+young Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.
+
+"I mean there are people and people," he added astutely.  "Your dad
+looks awfully decent, for instance."
+
+"Oh yes!" said Holly fervently; "he is."
+
+A flush mounted in Val's cheeks--that scene in the Pandemonium
+promenade--the dark man with the pink carnation developing into his
+own father!  "But you know what the Forsytes are," he said almost
+viciously.  "Oh! I forgot; you don't."
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit.  Look at Uncle
+Soames!"
+
+"I'd like to," said Holly.
+
+Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers.  "Oh! no," he
+said, "let's go out.  You'll see him quite soon enough.  What's
+your brother like?"
+
+Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without
+answering.  How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered
+anything, had been her lord, master, and ideal?
+
+"Does he sit on you?" said Val shrewdly.  "I shall be knowing him
+at Oxford.  Have you got any horses?"
+
+Holly nodded.  "Would you like to see the stables?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into the
+stable-yard.  There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy brown-and-
+white dog, so old that he did not get up, but faintly waved the
+tail curled over his back.
+
+"That's Balthasar," said Holly; "he's so old--awfully old, nearly
+as old as I am.  Poor old boy!  He's devoted to Dad."
+
+"Balthasar!  That's a rum name.  He isn't purebred you know."
+
+"No!  but he's a darling," and she bent down to stroke the dog.
+Gentle and supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck and
+hands, she seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing slipped
+between him and all previous knowledge.
+
+"When grandfather died," she said, "he wouldn't eat for two days.
+He saw him die, you know."
+
+"Was that old Uncle Jolyon?  Mother always says he was a topper."
+
+"He was," said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.
+
+In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a
+long black tail and mane.  "This is mine Fairy."
+
+"Ah!" said Val, "she's a jolly palfrey.  But you ought to bang her
+tail.  She'd look much smarter."  Then catching her wondering look,
+he thought suddenly: 'I don't know--anything she likes!'  And he
+took a long sniff of the stable air.  "Horses are ripping, aren't
+they?  My Dad ..."  he stopped.
+
+"Yes?" said Holly.
+
+An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him--but not quite.
+"Oh!  I don't know he's often gone a mucker over them.  I'm jolly
+keen on them too--riding and hunting.  I like racing awfully, as
+well; I should like to be a gentleman rider."  And oblivious of the
+fact that he had but one more day in town, with two engagements, he
+plumped out:
+
+"I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in Richmond
+Park?"
+
+Holly clasped her hands.
+
+"Oh yes!  I simply love riding.  But there's Jolly's horse; why
+don't you ride him?  Here he is.  We could go after tea."
+
+Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.
+
+He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown boots
+and Bedford cords.
+
+"I don't much like riding his horse," he said.  "He mightn't like
+it.  Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect.  Not that I
+believe in buckling under to him, you know.  You haven't got an
+uncle, have you?  This is rather a good beast," he added,
+scrutinising Jolly's horse, a dark brown, which was showing the
+whites of its eyes.  "You haven't got any hunting here, I suppose?"
+
+"No; I don't know that I want to hunt.  It must be awfully
+exciting, of course; but it's cruel, isn't it?  June says so."
+
+"Cruel?" ejaculated Val.  "Oh! that's all rot.  Who's June?"
+
+"My sister--my half-sister, you know--much older than me."  She had
+put her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly's horse, and was rubbing
+her nose against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which
+seemed to have an hypnotic effect on the animal.  Val contemplated
+her cheek resting against the horse's nose, and her eyes gleaming
+round at him.  'She's really a duck,' he thought.
+
+They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by
+the dog Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth, and
+clearly expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.
+
+"This is a ripping place," said Val from under the oak tree, where
+they had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.
+
+"Yes," said Holly, and sighed.  "Of course I want to go everywhere.
+I wish I were a gipsy."
+
+"Yes, gipsies are jolly," replied Val, with a conviction which had
+just come to him; "you're rather like one, you know."
+
+Holly's face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded by
+the sun.
+
+"To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in the
+open--oh! wouldn't it be fun?"
+
+"Let's do it!" said Val.
+
+"Oh yes, let's!"
+
+"It'd be grand sport, just you and I."
+
+Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.
+
+"Well, we've got to do it," said Val obstinately, but reddening
+too.
+
+"I believe in doing things you want to do.  What's down there?"
+
+"The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm."
+
+"Let's go down!"
+
+Holly glanced back at the house.
+
+"It's tea-time, I expect; there's Dad beckoning."
+
+Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.
+
+When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two middle-aged
+Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical effect, and they
+became quite silent.  It was, indeed, an impressive spectacle.  The
+two were seated side by side on an arrangement in marqueterie which
+looked like three silvery pink chairs made one, with a low
+tea-table in front of them.  They seemed to have taken up that
+position, as far apart as the seat would permit, so that they need
+not look at each other too much; and they were eating and drinking
+rather than talking--Soames with his air of despising the tea-cake
+as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding himself slightly amusing.  To
+the casual eye neither would have seemed greedy, but both were
+getting through a good deal of sustenance.  The two young ones
+having been supplied with food, the process went on silent and
+absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, Jolyon said to
+Soames:
+
+"And how's Uncle James?"
+
+"Thanks, very shaky."
+
+"We're a wonderful family, aren't we?  The other day I was
+calculating the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my
+father's family Bible.  I make it eighty-four already, and five
+still living.  They ought to beat the record;" and looking
+whimsically at Soames, he added:
+
+"We aren't the men they were, you know."
+
+Soames smiled.  'Do you really think I shall admit that I'm not
+their equal'; he seemed to be saying, 'or that I've got to give up
+anything, especially life?'
+
+"We may live to their age, perhaps," pursued Jolyon, "but self-
+consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that's the difference
+between us.  We've lost conviction. How and when self-consciousness
+was born I never can make out.  My father had a little, but I don't
+believe any other of the old Forsytes ever had a scrap.  Never to
+see yourself as others see you, it's a wonderful preservative.  The
+whole history of the last century is in the difference between us.
+And between us and you," he added, gazing through a ring of smoke
+at Val and Holly, uncomfortable under his quizzical regard,
+"there'll be--another difference.  I wonder what."
+
+Soames took out his watch.
+
+"We must go," he said, "if we're to catch our train."
+
+"Uncle Soames never misses a train," muttered Val, with his mouth
+full.
+
+"Why should I?" Soames answered simply.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," grumbled Val, "other people do."
+
+At the front door he gave Holly's slim brown hand a long and
+surreptitious squeeze.
+
+"Look out for me to-morrow," he whispered; "three o'clock.  I'll
+wait for you in the road; it'll save time.  We'll have a ripping
+ride."  He gazed back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the
+principles of a man about town, would have waved his hand.  He felt
+in no mood to tolerate his uncle's conversation.  But he was not in
+danger.  Soames preserved a perfect muteness, busy with far-away
+thoughts.
+
+The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and a
+half which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days
+when he came down to watch with secret pride the building of the
+house--that house which was to have been the home of him and her
+from whom he was now going to seek release.  He looked back once,
+up that endless vista of autumn lane between the yellowing hedges.
+What an age ago!  "I don't want to see her," he had said to Jolyon.
+Was that true?  'I may have to,' he thought; and he shivered,
+seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say mean
+footsteps on one's grave.  A chilly world!  A queer world!  And
+glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: 'Wish I were his age!
+I wonder what she's like now!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP
+
+
+When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting, for
+daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving unconsciously
+a revival of that momentary vision of his father sitting in the old
+leather chair with his knees crossed and his straight eyes gazing
+up from under the dome of his massive brow.  Often in this little
+room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would catch a moment of
+communion with his father.  Not, indeed, that he had definitely any
+faith in the persistence of the human spirit--the feeling was not
+so logical--it was, rather, an atmospheric impact, like a scent, or
+one of those strong animistic impressions from forms, or effects of
+light, to which those with the artist's eye are especially prone.
+Here only--in this little unchanged room where his father had spent
+the most of his waking hours--could be retrieved the feeling that
+he was not quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old spirit
+and the warmth of his masterful lovability endured.
+
+What would his father be advising now, in this sudden recrudescence
+of an old tragedy--what would he say to this menace against her to
+whom he had taken such a fancy in the last weeks of his life?  'I
+must do my best for her,' thought Jolyon; 'he left her to me in his
+will.  But what is the best?'
+
+And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd
+common sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient chair
+and crossed his knees.  But he felt a mere shadow sitting there;
+nor did any inspiration come, while the fingers of the wind tapped
+on the darkening panes of the french-window.
+
+'Go and see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here?
+What's her life been?  What is it now, I wonder?  Beastly to rake
+up things at this time of day.'  Again the figure of his cousin
+standing with a hand on a front door of a fine olive-green leaped
+out, vivid, like one of those figures from old-fashioned clocks
+when the hour strikes; and his words sounded in Jolyon's ears
+clearer than any chime: "I manage my own affairs.  I've told you
+once, I tell you again: We are not at home."  The repugnance he had
+then felt for Soames--for his flat-cheeked, shaven face full of
+spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure
+slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not digest--
+came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase.  'I
+dislike him,' he thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me.
+And that's lucky; it'll make it easier for me to back his wife.'
+Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally averse
+from what he termed 'ructions'; unless angered, he conformed deeply
+to that classic description of the she-dog, 'Er'd ruther run than
+fight.'  A little smile became settled in his beard.  Ironical that
+Soames should come down here--to this house, built for himself!
+How he had gazed and gaped at this ruin of his past intention;
+furtively nosing at the walls and stairway, appraising everything!
+And intuitively Jolyon thought: 'I believe the fellow even now
+would like to be living here.  He could never leave off longing for
+what he once owned!  Well, I must act, somehow or other; but it's a
+bore--a great bore.'
+
+Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene
+would see him.
+
+The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so
+wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms.
+Rumours of war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the
+close of the summer holidays.  And the streets to Jolyon, who was
+not often up in town, had a feverish look, due to these new motor-
+cars and cabs, of which he disapproved aesthetically.  He counted
+these vehicles from his hansom, and made the proportion of them one
+in twenty.  'They were one in thirty about a year ago,' he thought;
+'they've come to stay.  Just so much more rattling round of wheels
+and general stink'--for he was one of those rather rare Liberals
+who object to anything new when it takes a material form; and he
+instructed his driver to get down to the river quickly, out of the
+traffic, desiring to look at the water through the mellowing screen
+of plane-trees.  At the little block of flats which stood back some
+fifty yards from the Embankment, he told the cabman to wait, and
+went up to the first floor.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Heron was at home!
+
+The effect of a settled if very modest income was at once apparent
+to him remembering the threadbare refinement in that tiny flat
+eight years ago when he announced her good fortune.  Everything was
+now fresh, dainty, and smelled of flowers.  The general effect was
+silvery with touches of black, hydrangea colour, and gold.  'A
+woman of great taste,' he thought.  Time had dealt gently with
+Jolyon, for he was a Forsyte.  But with Irene Time hardly seemed to
+deal at all, or such was his impression.  She appeared to him not a
+day older, standing there in mole-coloured velvet corduroy, with
+soft dark eyes and dark gold hair, with outstretched hand and a
+little smile.
+
+"Won't you sit down?"
+
+He had probably never occupied a chair with a fuller sense of
+embarrassment.
+
+"You look absolutely unchanged," he said.
+
+"And you look younger, Cousin Jolyon."
+
+Jolyon ran his hands through his hair, whose thickness was still a
+comfort to him.
+
+"I'm ancient, but I don't feel it.  That's one thing about paint-
+ing, it keeps you young.  Titian lived to ninety-nine, and had to
+have plague to kill him off.  Do you know, the first time I ever
+saw you I thought of a picture by him?"
+
+"When did you see me for the first time?"
+
+"In the Botanical Gardens."
+
+"How did you know me, if you'd never seen me before?"
+
+"By someone who came up to you."  He was looking at her hardily,
+but her face did not change; and she said quietly:
+
+"Yes; many lives ago."
+
+"What is your recipe for youth, Irene?"
+
+"People who don't live are wonderfully preserved."
+
+H'm! a bitter little saying!  People who don't live!  But an
+opening, and he took it.  "You remember my Cousin Soames?"
+
+He saw her smile faintly at that whimsicality, and at once went on:
+
+"He came to see me the day before yesterday!  He wants a divorce.
+Do you?"
+
+"I?"  The word seemed startled out of her.  "After twelve years?
+It's rather late.  Won't it be difficult?"
+
+Jolyon looked hard into her face.  "Unless...."  he said.
+
+"Unless I have a lover now.  But I have never had one since."
+
+What did he feel at the simplicity and candour of those words?
+Relief, surprise, pity!  Venus for twelve years without a lover!
+
+"And yet," he said, "I suppose you would give a good deal to be
+free, too?"
+
+"I don't know.  What does it matter, now?"
+
+"But if you were to love again?"
+
+"I should love."  In that simple answer she seemed to sum up the
+whole philosophy of one on whom the world had turned its back.
+
+"Well!  Is there anything you would like me to say to him?"
+
+"Only that I'm sorry he's not free.  He had his chance once.  I
+don't know why he didn't take it."
+
+"Because he was a Forsyte; we never part with things, you know,
+unless we want something in their place; and not always then."
+
+Irene smiled.  "Don't you, Cousin Jolyon?--I think you do."
+
+"Of course, I'm a bit of a mongrel--not quite a pure Forsyte.  I
+never take the halfpennies off my cheques, I put them on," said
+Jolyon uneasily.
+
+"Well, what does Soames want in place of me now?"
+
+"I don't know; perhaps children."
+
+She was silent for a little, looking down.
+
+"Yes," she murmured; "it's hard.  I would help him to be free if I
+could."
+
+Jolyon gazed into his hat, his embarrassment was increasing fast;
+so was his admiration, his wonder, and his pity.  She was so
+lovely, and so lonely; and altogether it was such a coil!
+
+"Well," he said, "I shall have to see Soames.  If there's anything
+I can do for you I'm always at your service.  You must think of me
+as a wretched substitute for my father.  At all events I'll let you
+know what happens when I speak to Soames.  He may supply the
+material himself."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You see, he has a lot to lose; and I have nothing.  I should like
+him to be free; but I don't see what I can do."
+
+"Nor I at the moment," said Jolyon, and soon after took his leave.
+He went down to his hansom.  Half-past three!  Soames would be at
+his office still.
+
+"To the Poultry," he called through the trap.  In front of the
+Houses of Parliament and in Whitehall, newsvendors were calling,
+"Grave situation in the Transvaal!" but the cries hardly roused
+him, absorbed in recollection of that very beautiful figure, of her
+soft dark glance, and the words: "I have never had one since."
+What on earth did such a woman do with her life, back-watered like
+this?  Solitary, unprotected, with every man's hand against her or
+rather--reaching out to grasp her at the least sign.  And year
+after year she went on like that!
+
+The word 'Poultry' above the passing citizens brought him back to
+reality.
+
+'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte,' in black letters on a ground the
+colour of peasoup, spurred him to a sort of vigour, and he went up
+the stone stairs muttering: "Fusty musty ownerships!  Well, we
+couldn't do without them!"
+
+"I want Mr. Soames Forsyte," he said to the boy who opened the
+door.
+
+"What name?"
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
+
+The youth looked at him curiously, never having seen a Forsyte with
+a beard, and vanished.
+
+The offices of 'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte' had slowly absorbed
+the offices of 'Tooting and Bowles,' and occupied the whole of the
+first floor.
+
+The firm consisted now of nothing but Soames and a number of
+managing and articled clerks.  The complete retirement of James
+some six years ago had accelerated business, to which the final
+touch of speed had been imparted when Bustard dropped off, worn
+out, as many believed, by the suit of 'Fryer versus Forsyte,' more
+in Chancery than ever and less likely to benefit its beneficiaries.
+Soames, with his saner grasp of actualities, had never permitted it
+to worry him; on the contrary, he had long perceived that
+Providence had presented him therein with L200 a year net in
+perpetuity, and--why not?
+
+When Jolyon entered, his cousin was drawing out a list of holdings
+in Consols, which in view of the rumours of war he was going to
+advise his companies to put on the market at once, before other
+companies did the same.  He looked round, sidelong, and said:
+
+"How are you?  Just one minute.  Sit down, won't you?" And having
+entered three amounts, and set a ruler to keep his place, he turned
+towards Jolyon, biting the side of his flat forefinger....
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+"I have seen her."
+
+Soames frowned.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She has remained faithful to memory."   Having said that, Jolyon
+was ashamed.  His cousin had flushed a dusky yellowish red.  What
+had made him tease the poor brute!
+
+"I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free.  Twelve years is
+a long time.  You know your law, and what chance it gives you."
+Soames uttered a curious little grunt, and the two remained a full
+minute without speaking.  'Like wax!' thought Jolyon, watching that
+close face, where the flush was fast subsiding.  'He'll never give
+me a sign of what he's thinking, or going to do.  Like wax!'  And
+he transferred his gaze to a plan of that flourishing town, 'By-
+Street on Sea,' the future existence of which lay exposed on the
+wall to the possessive instincts of the firm's clients.  The whim-
+sical thought flashed through him: 'I wonder if I shall get a bill
+of costs for this--"To attending Mr. Jolyon Forsyte in the matter
+of my divorce, to receiving his account of his visit to my wife,
+and to advising him to go and see her again, sixteen and
+eightpence."'
+
+Suddenly Soames said: "I can't go on like this.  I tell you, I
+can't go on like this."  His eyes were shifting from side to side,
+like an animal's when it looks for way of escape.  'He really
+suffers,' thought Jolyon; 'I've no business to forget that, just
+because I don't like him.'
+
+"Surely," he said gently, "it lies with yourself.  A man can always
+put these things through if he'll take it on himself."
+
+Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come from
+somewhere very deep.
+
+"Why should I suffer more than I've suffered already?  Why should
+I?"
+
+Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders.  His reason agreed, his
+instinct rebelled; he could not have said why.
+
+"Your father," went on Soames, "took an interest in her--why,
+goodness knows!  And I suppose you do too?" he gave Jolyon a sharp
+look.  "It seems to me that one only has to do another person a
+wrong to get all the sympathy.  I don't know in what way I was to
+blame I've never known.  I always treated her well.  I gave her
+everything she could wish for.  I wanted her."
+
+Again Jolyon's reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head.
+'What is it?' he thought; 'there must be something wrong in me.
+Yet if there is, I'd rather be wrong than right.'
+
+"After all," said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, "she was
+my wife."
+
+In a flash the thought went through his listener: 'There it is!
+Ownerships!  Well, we all own things.  But--human beings!  Pah!'
+
+"You have to look at facts," he said drily, "or rather the want of
+them."
+
+Soames gave him another quick suspicious look.
+
+"The want of them?" he said.  "Yes, but I am not so sure."
+
+"I beg your pardon," replied Jolyon; "I've told you what she said.
+It was explicit."
+
+"My experience has not been one to promote blind confidence in her
+word.  We shall see."
+
+Jolyon got up.
+
+"Good-bye," he said curtly.
+
+"Good-bye," returned Soames; and Jolyon went out trying to
+understand the look, half-startled, half-menacing, on his cousin's
+face.  He sought Waterloo Station in a disturbed frame of mind, as
+though the skin of his moral being had been scraped; and all the
+way down in the train he thought of Irene in her lonely flat, and
+of Soames in his lonely ofce, and of the strange paralysis of life
+that lay on them both.  'In chancery!'  he thought.  'Both their
+necks in chancery--and her's so pretty!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+VAL HEARS THE NEWS
+
+
+The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous
+feature in the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke two
+and kept one; it was the latter event which caused him, if
+anything, the greater surprise, while jogging back to town from
+Robin Hill after his ride with Holly.  She had been even prettier
+than he had thought her yesterday, on her silver-roan, long-tailed
+'palfrey'; and it seemed to him, self-critical in the brumous
+October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that only his boots
+had shone throughout their two-hour companionship.  He took out his
+new gold 'hunter'--present from James--and looked not at the time,
+but at sections of his face in the glittering back of its opened
+case.  He had a temporary spot over one eyebrow, and it displeased
+him, for it must have displeased her.  Crum never had any spots.
+Together with Crum rose the scene in the promenade of the
+Pandemonium.  To-day he had not had the faintest desire to unbosom
+himself to Holly about his father.  His father lacked poetry, the
+stirrings of which he was feeling for the first time in his
+nineteen years.  The Liberty, with Cynthia Dark, that almost
+mythical embodiment of rapture; the Pandemonium, with the woman of
+uncertain age--both seemed to Val completely 'off,' fresh from
+communion with this new, shy, dark-haired young cousin of his.  She
+rode 'Jolly well,' too, so that it had been all the more flattering
+that she had let him lead her where he would in the long gallops of
+Richmond Park, though she knew them so much better than he did.
+Looking back on it all, he was mystified by the barrenness of his
+speech; he felt that he could say 'an awful lot of fetching things'
+if he had but the chance again, and the thought that he must go
+back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and to Oxford on the twelfth--
+'to that beastly exam,' too--without the faintest chance of first
+seeing her again, caused darkness to settle on his spirit even more
+quickly than on the evening.  He should write to her, however, and
+she had promised to answer.  Perhaps, too, she would come up to
+Oxford to see her brother.  That thought was like the first star,
+which came out as he rode into Padwick's livery stables in the
+purlieus of Sloane Square.  He got off and stretched himself
+luxuriously, for he had ridden some twenty-five good miles.  The
+Dartie within him made him chaffer for five minutes with young
+Padwick concerning the favourite for the Cambridgeshire; then with
+the words, "Put the gee down to my account," he walked away, a
+little wide at the knees, and flipping his boots with his knotty
+little cane.  'I don't feel a bit inclined to go out,' he thought.
+'I wonder if mother will stand fizz for my last night!'  With
+'fizz' and recollection, he could well pass a domestic evening.
+
+When he came down, speckless after his bath, he found his mother
+scrupulous in a low evening dress, and, to his annoyance, his Uncle
+Soames.  They stopped talking when he came in; then his uncle said:
+
+"He'd better be told."
+
+At those words, which meant something about his father, of course,
+Val's first thought was of Holly.  Was it anything beastly?  His
+mother began speaking.
+
+"Your father," she said in her fashionably appointed voice, while
+her fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, "your
+father, my dear boy, has--is not at Newmarket; he's on his way to
+South America.  He--he's left us."
+
+Val looked from her to Soames.  Left them!  Was he sorry?  Was he
+fond of his father?  It seemed to him that he did not know.  Then,
+suddenly--as at a whiff of gardenias and cigars--his heart twitched
+within him, and he was sorry.  One's father belonged to one, could
+not go off in this fashion--it was not done!  Nor had he always
+been the 'bounder' of the Pandemonium promenade.  There were
+precious memories of tailors' shops and horses, tips at school, and
+general lavish kindness, when in luck.
+
+"But why?" he said.  Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he had
+asked.  The mask of his mother's face was all disturbed; and he
+burst out:
+
+"All right, Mother, don't tell me!  Only, what does it mean?"
+
+"A divorce, Val, I'm afraid."
+
+Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his uncle--
+that uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a guarantee
+against the consequences of having a father, even against the
+Dartie blood in his own veins.  The flat-checked visage seemed to
+wince, and this upset him.
+
+"It won't be public, will it?"
+
+So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued
+to the unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public
+Press.
+
+"Can't it be done quietly somehow?  It's so disgusting for--for
+mother, and--and everybody."
+
+"Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure."
+
+"Yes--but, why is it necessary at all?  Mother doesn't want to
+marry again."
+
+Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his
+schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of--Holly!
+Unbearable!  What was to be gained by it?
+
+"Do you, Mother?" he said sharply.
+
+Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the
+one she loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire
+chair in which she had been sitting.  She saw that her son would be
+against her unless he was told everything; and, yet, how could she
+tell him?  Thus, still plucking at the green' brocade, she stared
+at Soames.  Val, too, stared at Soames.  Surely this embodiment of
+respectability and the sense of property could not wish to bring
+such a slur on his own sister!
+
+Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth
+surface of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his
+nephew, he began:
+
+"You don't understand what your mother has had to put up with these
+twenty years.  This is only the last straw, Val."  And glancing up
+sideways at Winifred, he added:
+
+"Shall I tell him?"
+
+Winifred was silent.  If he were not told, he would be against her!
+Yet, how dreadful to be told such things of his own father!
+Clenching her lips, she nodded.
+
+Soames spoke in a rapid, even voice:
+
+"He has always been a burden round your mother's neck.  She has
+paid his debts over and over again; he has often been drunk, abused
+and threatened her; and now he is gone to Buenos Aires with a
+dancer."  And, as if distrusting the efficacy of those words on the
+boy, he went on quickly
+
+"He took your mother's pearls to give to her."
+
+Val jerked up his hand, then.  At that signal of distress Winifred
+cried out:
+
+"That'll do, Soames-stop!"
+
+In the boy, the Dartie and the Forsyte were struggling.  For debts,
+drink, dancers, he had a certain sympathy; but the pearls-no!  That
+was too much!  And suddenly he found his mother's hand squeezing
+his.
+
+"You see," he heard Soames say, "we can't have it all begin over
+again.  There's a limit; we must strike while the iron's hot."
+
+Val freed his hand.
+
+"But--you're--never going to bring out that about the pearls!  I
+couldn't stand that--I simply couldn't!"
+
+Winifred cried out:
+
+"No, no, Val--oh no!  That's only to show you how impossible your
+father is!"  And his uncle nodded.  Somewhat assuaged, Val took out
+a cigarette.  His father had bought him that thin curved case.  Oh!
+it was unbearable--just as he was going up to Oxford!
+
+"Can't mother be protected without?" he said.  "I could look after
+her.  It could always be done later if it was really necessary."
+
+A smile played for a moment round Soames' lips, and became bitter.
+
+"You don't know what you're talking of; nothing's so fatal as delay
+in such matters."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I tell you, boy, nothing's so fatal.  I know from experience."
+
+His voice had the ring of exasperation.  Val regarded him round-
+eyed, never having known his uncle express any sort of feeling.
+Oh! Yes--he remembered now--there had been an Aunt Irene, and
+something had happened--something which people kept dark; he had
+heard his father once use an unmentionable word of her.
+
+"I don't want to speak ill of your father," Soames went on
+doggedly, "but I know him well enough to be sure that he'll be back
+on your mother's hands before a year's over.  You can imagine what
+that will mean to her and to all of you after this.  The only thing
+is to cut the knot for good."
+
+In spite of himself, Val was impressed; and, happening to look at
+his mother's face, he got what was perhaps his first real insight
+into the fact that his own feelings were not always what mattered
+most.
+
+"All right, mother," he said; "we'll back you up.  Only I'd like to
+know when it'll be.  It's my first term, you know.  I don't want to
+be up there when it comes off."
+
+"Oh! my dear boy," murmured Winifred, "it is a bore for you."  So,
+by habit, she phrased what, from the expression of her face, was
+the most poignant regret.  "When will it be, Soames?"
+
+"Can't tell--not for months.  We must get restitution first."
+
+'What the deuce is that?' thought Val.  'What silly brutes lawyers
+are!  Not for months!  I know one thing: I'm not going to dine in!'
+And he said:
+
+"Awfully sorry, mother, I've got to go out to dinner now."
+
+Though it was his last night, Winifred nodded almost gratefully;
+they both felt that they had gone quite far enough in the
+expression of feeling.
+
+Val sought the misty freedom of Green Street, reckless and
+depressed.  And not till he reached Piccadilly did he discover that
+he had only eighteen-pence.  One couldn't dine off eighteen-pence,
+and he was very hungry.  He looked longingly at the windows of the
+Iseeum Club, where he had often eaten of the best with his father!
+Those pearls!  There was no getting over them!  But the more he
+brooded and the further he walked the hungrier he naturally became.
+Short of trailing home, there were only two places where he could
+go--his grandfather's in Park Lane, and Timothy's in the Bayswater
+Road.  Which was the less deplorable?  At his grandfather's he
+would probably get a better dinner on the spur of the moment.  At
+Timothy's they gave you a jolly good feed when they expected you,
+not otherwise.  He decided on Park Lane, not unmoved by the thought
+that to go up to Oxford without affording his grandfather a chance
+to tip him was hardly fair to either of them.  His mother would
+hear he had been there, of course, and might think it funny; but he
+couldn't help that.  He rang the bell.
+
+"Hullo, Warmson, any dinner for me, d'you think?"
+
+"They're just going in, Master Val.  Mr. Forsyte will be very glad
+to see you.  He was saying at lunch that he never saw you
+nowadays."
+
+Val grinned.
+
+"Well, here I am.  Kill the fatted calf, Warmson, let's have fizz."
+
+Warmson smiled faintly--in his opinion Val was a young limb.
+
+"I will ask Mrs. Forsyte, Master Val."
+
+"I say," Val grumbled, taking off his overcoat, "I'm not at school
+any more, you know."
+
+Warmson, not without a sense of humour, opened the door beyond the
+stag's-horn coat stand, with the words:
+
+"Mr. Valerus, ma'am."
+
+"Confound him!" thought Val, entering.
+
+A warm embrace, a "Well, Val!" from Emily, and a rather quavery "So
+there you are at last!" from James, restored his sense of dignity.
+
+"Why didn't you let us know?  There's only saddle of mutton.
+Champagne, Warmson," said Emily.  And they went in.
+
+At the great dining-table, shortened to its utmost, under which so
+many fashionable legs had rested, James sat at one end, Emily at
+the other, Val half-way between them; and something of the
+loneliness of his grandparents, now that all their four children
+were flown, reached the boy's spirit.  'I hope I shall kick the
+bucket long before I'm as old as grandfather,' he thought.  'Poor
+old chap, he's as thin as a rail!'  And lowering his voice while
+his grandfather and Warmson were in discussion about sugar in the
+soup, he said to Emily:
+
+"It's pretty brutal at home, Granny.  I suppose you know."
+
+"Yes, dear boy."
+
+"Uncle Soames was there when I left.  I say, isn't there anything
+to be done to prevent a divorce?  Why is he so beastly keen on it?"
+
+"Hush, my dear!" murmured Emily; "we're keeping it from your
+grandfather."
+
+James' voice sounded from the other end.
+
+"What's that?  What are you talking about?"
+
+"About Val's college," returned Emily.  "Young Pariser was there,
+James; you remember--he nearly broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
+afterwards."
+
+James muttered that he did not know--Val must look after himself up
+there, or he'd get into bad ways.  And he looked at his grandson
+with gloom, out of which affection distrustfully glimmered.
+
+"What I'm afraid of," said Val to his plate, "is of being hard up,
+you know."
+
+By instinct he knew that the weak spot in that old man was fear of
+insecurity for his grandchildren.
+
+"Well," said James, and the soup in his spoon dribbled over,
+"you'll have a good allowance; but you must keep within it."
+
+"Of course," murmured Val; "if it is good.  How much will it be,
+Grandfather?"
+
+"Three hundred and fifty; it's too much.  I had next to nothing at
+your age."
+
+Val sighed.  He had hoped for four, and been afraid of three.  "I
+don't know what your young cousin has," said James; "he's up there.
+His father's a rich man."
+
+"Aren't you?" asked Val hardily.
+
+"I?" replied James, flustered.  "I've got so many expenses.  Your
+father...." and he was silent.
+
+"Cousin Jolyon's got an awfully jolly place.  I went down there
+with Uncle Soames--ripping stables."
+
+"Ah!" murmured James profoundly.  "That house--I knew how it would
+be!"  And he lapsed into gloomy meditation over his fish-bones.
+His son's tragedy, and the deep cleavage it had caused in the
+Forsyte family, had still the power to draw him down into a
+whirlpool of doubts and misgivings.  Val, who hankered to talk of
+Robin Hill, because Robin Hill meant Holly, turned to Emily and
+said:
+
+"Was that the house built for Uncle Soames?"  And, receiving her
+nod, went on: "I wish you'd tell me about him, Granny.  What became
+of Aunt Irene?  Is she still going?  He seems awfully worked-up
+about something to-night."
+
+Emily laid her finger on her lips, but the word Irene had caught
+James' ear.
+
+"What's that?" he said, staying a piece of mutton close to his
+lips.  "Who's been seeing her?  I knew we hadn't heard the last of
+that."
+
+"Now, James," said Emily, "eat your dinner.  Nobody's been seeing
+anybody."
+
+James put down his fork.
+
+"There you go," he said.  "I might die before you'd tell me of it.
+Is Soames getting a divorce?"
+
+"Nonsense," said Emily with incomparable aplomb; "Soames is much
+too sensible."
+
+James had sought his own throat, gathering the long white whiskers
+together on the skin and bone of it.
+
+"She--she was always...." he said, and with that enigmatic remark
+the conversation lapsed, for Warmson had returned.  But later, when
+the saddle of mutton had been succeeded by sweet, savoury, and
+dessert, and Val had received a cheque for twenty pounds and his
+grandfather's kiss--like no other kiss in the world, from lips
+pushed out with a sort of fearful suddenness, as if yielding to
+weakness--he returned to the charge in the hall.
+
+"Tell us about Uncle Soames, Granny.  Why is he so keen on mother's
+getting a divorce?"
+
+"Your Uncle Soames," said Emily, and her voice had in it an
+exaggerated assurance, "is a lawyer, my dear boy.  He's sure to
+know best."
+
+"Is he?" muttered Val.  "But what did become of Aunt Irene?  I
+remember she was jolly good-looking."
+
+"She--er...."  said Emily, "behaved very badly.  We don't talk
+about it."
+
+"Well, I don't want everybody at Oxford to know about our affairs,"
+ejaculated Val; "it's a brutal idea.  Why couldn't father be pre-
+vented without its being made public?"
+
+Emily sighed.  She had always lived rather in an atmosphere of
+divorce, owing to her fashionable proclivities--so many of those
+whose legs had been under her table having gained a certain notor-
+iety.  When, however, it touched her own family, she liked it no
+better than other people.  But she was eminently practical, and a
+woman of courage, who never pursued a shadow in preference to its
+substance.
+
+"Your mother," she said, "will be happier if she's quite free, Val.
+Good-night, my dear boy; and don't wear loud waistcoats up at
+Oxford, they're not the thing just now.  Here's a little present."
+
+With another five pounds in his hand, and a little warmth in his
+heart, for he was fond of his grandmother, he went out into Park
+Lane.  A wind had cleared the mist, the autumn leaves were
+rustling, and the stars were shining.  With all that money in his
+pocket an impulse to 'see life' beset him; but he had not gone
+forty yards in the direction of Piccadilly when Holly's shy face,
+and her eyes with an imp dancing in their gravity, came up before
+him, and his hand seemed to be tingling again from the pressure of
+her warm gloved hand.  'No, dash it!'  he thought, 'I'm going
+home!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SOAMES ENTERTAINS THE FUTURE
+
+
+It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and
+summer lingered below the yellowing leaves.  Soames took many looks
+at the day from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that Sunday
+morning.
+
+With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat, and
+equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them
+on the river.  Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he could not
+tell whether or no he wished to take Annette alone.  She was so
+very pretty--could he trust himself not to say irrevocable words,
+passing beyond the limits of discretion?  Roses on the veranda were
+still in bloom, and the hedges ever-green, so that there was almost
+nothing of middle-aged autumn to chill the mood; yet was he
+nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his powers to steer just
+the right course.  This visit had been planned to produce in
+Annette and her mother a due sense of his possessions, so that they
+should be ready to receive with respect any overture might later be
+disposed to make.  He dressed with great care, making himself
+neither too young nor too old, very thankful that his hair was
+still thick and smooth and had no grey in it.  Three times he went
+up to his picture-gallery.  If they had any knowledge at all, they
+must see at once that his collection alone was worth at least
+thirty thousand pounds.  He minutely inspected, too, the pretty
+bedroom overlooking the river where they would take off their hats.
+It would be her bedroom if--if the matter went through, and she
+became his wife.  Going up to the dressing-table he passed his hand
+over the lilac-coloured pincushion, into which were stuck all kinds
+of pins; a bowl of pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his head
+turn just a little.  His wife!  If only the whole thing could be
+settled out of hand, and there was not the nightmare of this
+divorce to be gone through first; and with gloom puckered on his
+forehead, he looked out at the river shining beyond the roses and
+the lawn.  Madame Lamotte would never resist this prospect for her
+child; Annette would never resist her mother.  If only he were
+free!  He drove to the station to meet them.  What taste French-
+women had!  Madame Lamotte was in black with touches of lilac
+colour, Annette in greyish lilac linen, with cream coloured gloves
+and hat.  Rather pale she looked and Londony; and her blue eyes
+were demure.  Waiting for them to come down to lunch, Soames stood
+in the open french-window of the diningroom moved by that sensuous
+delight in sunshine and flowers and trees which only came to the
+full when youth and beauty were there to share it with one.  He had
+ordered the lunch with intense consideration; the wine was a very
+special Sauterne, the whole appointments of the meal perfect, the
+coffee served on the veranda super-excellent.  Madame Lamotte
+accepted creme de menthe; Annette refused.  Her manners were
+charming, with just a suspicion of 'the conscious beauty' creeping
+into them.  'Yes,' thought Soames, 'another year of London and that
+sort of life, and she'll be spoiled.'
+
+Madame was in sedate French raptures.  "Adorable!  Le soleil est si
+bon!  How everything is chic, is it not, Annette?  Monsieur is a
+real Monte Cristo."  Annette murmured assent, with a look up at
+Soames which he could not read.  He proposed a turn on the river.
+But to punt two persons when one of them looked so ravishing on
+those Chinese cushions was merely to suffer from a sense of lost
+opportunity; so they went but a short way towards Pangbourne,
+drifting slowly back, with every now and then an autumn leaf
+dropping on Annette or on her mother's black amplitude.  And Soames
+was not happy, worried by the thought: 'How--when--where--can I
+say--what?' They did not yet even know that he was married.  To
+tell them he was married might jeopardise his every chance; yet, if
+he did not definitely make them understand that he wished for
+Annette's hand, it would be dropping into some other clutch before
+he was free to claim it.
+
+At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the
+Transvaal.
+
+"There'll be war," he said.
+
+Madame Lamotte lamented.
+
+"Ces pauvres gens bergers!"  Could they not be left to themselves?
+
+Soames smiled--the question seemed to him absurd.
+
+Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British could
+not abandon their legitimate commercial interests.
+
+"Ah! that!"  But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a
+little hypocrite.  They were talking of justice and the Uitlanders,
+not of business.  Monsieur was the first who had spoken to her of
+that.
+
+"The Boers are only half-civilised," remarked Soames; "they stand
+in the way of progress.  It will never do to let our suzerainty
+go."
+
+"What does that mean to say?  Suzerainty!"
+
+"What a strange word!"  Soames became eloquent, roused by these
+threats to the principle of possession, and stimulated by Annette's
+eyes fixed on him.  He was delighted when presently she said:
+
+"I think Monsieur is right.  They should be taught a lesson."  She
+was sensible!
+
+"Of course," he said, "we must act with moderation.  I'm no jingo.
+We must be firm without bullying.  Will you come up and see my
+pictures?"  Moving from one to another of these treasures, he soon
+perceived that they knew nothing.  They passed his last Mauve, that
+remarkable study of a 'Hay-cart going Home,' as if it were a
+lithograph.  He waited almost with awe to see how they would view
+the jewel of his collection--an Israels whose price he had watched
+ascending till he was now almost certain it had reached top value,
+and would be better on the market again.  They did not view it at
+all.  This was a shock; and yet to have in Annette a virgin taste
+to form would be better than to have the silly, half-baked pre-
+dilections of the English middle-class to deal with.  At the end of
+the gallery was a Meissonier of which he was rather ashamed--
+Meissonier was so steadily going down.  Madame Lamotte stopped
+before it.
+
+"Meissonier!  Ah! What a jewel!"  Soames took advantage of that
+moment.  Very gently touching Annette's arm, he said:
+
+"How do you like my place, Annette?"
+
+She did not shrink, did not respond; she looked at him full, looked
+down, and murmured:
+
+"Who would not like it?  It is so beautiful!"
+
+"Perhaps some day--" Soames said, and stopped.
+
+So pretty she was, so self-possessed--she frightened him.  Those
+cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate
+curves--she was a standing temptation to indiscretion!  No!  No!
+One must be sure of one's ground--much surer!  'If I hold off,' he
+thought, 'it will tantalise her.'  And he crossed over to Madame
+Lamotte, who was still in front of the Meissonier.
+
+"Yes, that's quite a good example of his later work.  You must come
+again, Madame, and see them lighted up.  You must both come and
+spend a night."
+
+Enchanted, would it not be beautiful to see them lighted?  By
+moonlight too, the river must be ravishing!
+
+Annette murmured:
+
+"Thou art sentimental, Maman!"
+
+Sentimental!  That black-robed, comely, substantial Frenchwoman of
+the world!  And suddenly he was certain as he could be that there
+was no sentiment in either of them.  All the better.  Of what use
+sentiment?  And yet....!
+
+He drove to the station with them, and saw them into the train.  To
+the tightened pressure of his hand it seemed that Annette's fingers
+responded just a little; her face smiled at him through the dark.
+
+He went back to the carriage, brooding.  "Go on home, Jordan," he
+said to the coachman; "I'll walk."  And he strode out into the
+darkening lanes, caution and the desire of possession playing
+see-saw within him.  'Bon soir, monsieur!'  How softly she had said
+it.  To know what was in her mind!  The French--they were like
+cats--one could tell nothing!  But--how pretty!  What a perfect
+young thing to hold in one's arms!  What a mother for his heir!
+And he thought, with a smile, of his family and their surprise at a
+French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would play with
+it and buffet it confound them!
+
+The, poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted.  Shadows
+deepened in the water.  'I will and must be free,' he thought.  'I
+won't hang about any longer.  I'll go and see Irene.  If you want
+things done, do them yourself.  I must live again--live and move
+and have my being.'  And in echo to that queer biblicality church-
+bells chimed the call to evening prayer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AND VISITS THE PAST
+
+
+On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do
+what required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything
+he had yet undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one
+other action.  He chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene
+was more likely to be in, but mainly because he had failed to find
+sufficient resolution by daylight, had needed wine to give him
+extra daring.
+
+He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old
+Church, uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived.
+He found it hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read
+the name, 'Mrs. Irene Heron'--Heron, forsooth!  Her maiden name: so
+she used that again, did she?--he stepped back into the road to
+look up at the windows of the first floor.  Light was coming
+through in the corner fiat, and he could hear a piano being played.
+He had never had a love of music, had secretly borne it a grudge in
+the old days when so often she had turned to her piano, making of
+it a refuge place into which she knew he could not enter.  Repulse!
+The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at last open!
+Bitter memory came with that sound.  It must be she playing, and
+thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more undecided than
+ever.  Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his tongue felt
+dry, his heart beat fast.  'I have no cause to be afraid,' he
+thought.  And then the lawyer stirred within him.  Was he doing a
+foolish thing?  Ought he not to have arranged a formal meeting in
+the presence of her trustee?  No!  Not before that fellow Jolyon,
+who sympathised with her!  Never!  He crossed back into the
+doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of his heart,
+mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell.  When the
+door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by the scent
+which came--that perfume from away back in the past, bringing
+muffled remembrance: fragrance of a drawing-room he used to enter,
+of a house he used to own--perfume of dried rose-leaves and honey!
+
+"Say, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "your mistress will see me, I know."
+He had thought this out; she would think it was Jolyon!
+
+When the maid was gone and he was alone in the tiny hall, where the
+light was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls, carpet,
+everything was silvery, making the walled-in space all ghostly, he
+could only think ridiculously: 'Shall I go in with my overcoat on,
+or take it off?' The music ceased; the maid said from the doorway:
+
+"Will you walk in, sir?"
+
+Soames walked in.  He noted mechanically that all was still
+silvery, and that the upright piano was of satinwood.  She had
+risen and stood recoiled against it; her hand, placed on the keys
+as if groping for support, had struck a sudden discord, held for a
+moment, and released.  The light from the shaded piano-candle fell
+on her neck, leaving her face rather in shadow.  She was in a black
+evening dress, with a sort of mantilla over her shoulders--he did
+not remember ever having seen her in black, and the thought passed
+through him: 'She dresses even when she's alone.'
+
+"You!" he heard her whisper.
+
+Many times Soames had rehearsed this scene in fancy.  Rehearsal
+served him not at all.  He simply could not speak.  He had never
+thought that the sight of this woman whom he had once so
+passionately desired, so completely owned, and whom he had not seen
+for twelve years, could affect him in this way.  He had imagined
+himself speaking and acting, half as man of business, half as
+judge.  And now it was as if he were in the presence not of a mere
+woman and erring wife, but of some force, subtle and elusive as
+atmo-sphere itself within him and outside.  A kind of defensive
+irony welled up in him.
+
+"Yes, it's a queer visit!  I hope you're well."
+
+"Thank you.  Will you sit down?"
+
+She had moved away from the piano, and gone over to a window-seat,
+sinking on to it, with her hands clasped in her lap.  Light fell on
+her there, so that Soames could see her face, eyes, hair, strangely
+as he remembered them, strangely beautiful.
+
+He sat down on the edge of a satinwood chair, upholstered with
+silver-coloured stuff, close to where he was standing.
+
+"You have not changed," he said.
+
+"No?  What have you come for?"
+
+"To discuss things."
+
+"I have heard what you want from your cousin."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I am willing.  I have always been."
+
+The sound of her voice, reserved and close, the sight of her figure
+watchfully poised, defensive, was helping him now.  A thousand
+memories of her, ever on the watch against him, stirred, and....
+
+"Perhaps you will be good enough, then, to give me information on
+which I can act.  The law must be complied with."
+
+"I have none to give you that you don't know of.
+
+"Twelve years!  Do you suppose I can believe that?"
+
+"I don't suppose you will believe anything I say; but it's the
+truth."
+
+Soames looked at her hard.  He had said that she had not changed;
+now he perceived that she had.  Not in face, except that it was
+more beautiful; not in form, except that it was a little fuller--
+no!  She had changed spiritually.  There was more of her, as it
+were, something of activity and daring, where there had been sheer
+passive resistance.  'Ah!' he thought, 'that's her independent
+income!  Confound Uncle Jolyon!'
+
+"I suppose you're comfortably off now?" he said.
+
+"Thank you, yes."
+
+"Why didn't you let me provide for you?  I would have, in spite of
+everything."
+
+A faint smile came on her lips; but she did not answer.
+
+"You are still my wife," said Soames.  Why he said that, what he
+meant by it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after.  It was a
+truism almost preposterous, but its effect was startling.  She rose
+from the window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly still,
+looking at him.  He could see her bosom heaving.  Then she turned
+to the window and threw it open.
+
+"Why do that?" he said sharply.  "You'll catch cold in that dress.
+I'm not dangerous."  And he uttered a little sad laugh.
+
+She echoed it--faintly, bitterly.
+
+"It was--habit."
+
+"Rather odd habit," said Soames as bitterly.  "Shut the window!"
+
+She shut it and sat down again.  She had developed power, this
+woman--this--wife of his!  He felt it issuing from her as she sat
+there, in a sort of armour.  And almost unconsciously he rose and
+moved nearer; he wanted to see the expression on her face.  Her
+eyes met his unflinching.  Heavens!  how clear they were, and what
+a dark brown against that white skin, and that burnt-amber hair!
+And how white her shoulders.
+
+Funny sensation this!  He ought to hate her.
+
+"You had better tell me," he said; "it's to your advantage to be
+free as well as to mine.  That old matter is too old."
+
+"I have told you."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me there has been nothing--nobody?"
+
+"Nobody.  You must go to your own life."
+
+Stung by that retort, Soames moved towards the piano and back to
+the hearth, to and fro, as he had been wont in the old days in
+their drawing-room when his feelings were too much for him.
+
+"That won't do," he said.  "You deserted me.  In common justice
+it's for you...."
+
+He saw her shrug those white shoulders, heard her murmur:
+
+"Yes.  Why didn't you divorce me then?  Should I have cared?"
+
+He stopped, and looked at her intently with a sort of curiosity.
+What on earth did she do with herself, if she really lived quite
+alone?  And why had he not divorced her?  The old feeling that she
+had never understood him, never done him justice, bit him while he
+stared at her.
+
+"Why couldn't you have made me a good wife?" he said.
+
+"Yes; it was a crime to marry you.  I have paid for it.  You will
+find some way perhaps.  You needn't mind my name, I have none to
+lose.  Now I think you had better go."
+
+A sense of defeat--of being defrauded of his self-justification,
+and of something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset
+Soames like the breath of a cold fog.  Mechanically he reached up,
+took from the mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, and
+said:
+
+"Lowestoft.  Where did you get this?  I bought its fellow at
+Jobson's."  And, visited by the sudden memory of how, those many
+years ago, he and she had bought china together, he remained
+staring at the little bowl, as if it contained all the past.  Her
+voice roused him.
+
+"Take it.  I don't want it."
+
+Soames put it back on the shelf.
+
+"Will you shake hands?" he said.
+
+A faint smile curved her lips.  She held out her hand.  It was cold
+to his rather feverish touch.  'She's made of ice,' he thought--
+'she was always made of ice!'  But even as that thought darted
+through him, his senses were assailed by the perfume of her dress
+and body, as though the warmth within her, which had never been for
+him, were struggling to show its presence.  And he turned on his
+heel.  He walked out and away, as if someone with a whip were after
+him, not even looking for a cab, glad of the empty Embankment and
+the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows of the plane-tree
+leaves-confused, flurried, sore at heart, and vaguely disturbed, as
+though he had made some deep mistake whose consequences he could
+not foresee.  And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him
+if instead of, 'I think you had better go,' she had said, 'I think
+you had better stay!'  What should he have felt, what would he have
+done?  That cursed attraction of her was there for him even now,
+after all these years of estrangement and bitter thoughts.  It was
+there, ready to mount to his head at a sign, a touch.  'I was a
+fool to go!'  he muttered.  'I've advanced nothing.  Who could
+imagine?  I never thought!'  Memory, flown back to the first years
+of his marriage, played him torturing tricks.  She had not deserved
+to keep her beauty--the beauty he had owned and known so well.  And
+a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of his own admiration welled
+up in him.  Most men would have hated the sight of her, as she had
+deserved.  She had spoiled his life, wounded his pride to death,
+defrauded him of a son.  And yet the mere sight of her, cold and
+resisting as ever, had this power to upset him utterly!  It was
+some damned magnetism she had!  And no wonder if, as she asserted;
+she had lived untouched these last twelve years.  So Bosinney--
+cursed be his memory!--had lived on all this time with her!  Soames
+could not tell whether he was glad of that knowledge or no.
+
+Nearing his Club at last he stopped to buy a paper.  A headline
+ran: 'Boers reported to repudiate suzerainty!'  Suzerainty!  'Just
+like her!' he thought: 'she always did.  Suzerainty!  I still have
+it by rights.  She must be awfully lonely in that wretched little
+flat!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ON FORSYTE 'CHANGE
+
+
+Soames belonged to two clubs, 'The Connoisseurs,' which he put on
+his cards and seldom visited, and 'The Remove,' which he did not
+put on his cards and frequented.  He had joined this Liberal
+institution five years ago, having made sure that its members were
+now nearly all sound Conservatives in heart and pocket, if not in
+principle.  Uncle Nicholas had put him up.  The fine reading-room
+was decorated in the Adam style.
+
+On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news about
+the Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down seven-sixteenths
+since the morning.  He was turning away to seek the reading-room
+when a voice behind him said:
+
+"Well, Soames, that went off all right."
+
+It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away
+collar, with a black tie passed through a ring.  Heavens!  How
+young and dapper he looked at eighty-two!
+
+"I think Roger'd have been pleased," his uncle went on.  "The thing
+was very well done.  Blackley's?  I'll make a note of them.
+Buxton's done me no good.  These Boers are upsetting me--that
+fellow Chamberlain's driving the country into war.  What do you
+think?"
+
+"Bound to come," murmured Soames.
+
+Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, cleanshaven cheeks, very
+rosy after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his lips.
+This business had revived all his Liberal principles.
+
+"I mistrust that chap; he's a stormy petrel.  House-property will
+go down if there's war.  You'll have trouble with Roger's estate.
+I often told him he ought to get out of some of his houses.  He was
+an opinionated beggar."
+
+'There was a pair of you!' thought Soames.  But he never argued
+with an uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as 'a
+long-headed chap,' and the legal care of their property.
+
+"They tell me at Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice,
+"that Dartie has gone off at last.  That'll be a relief to your
+father.  He was a rotten egg."
+
+Again Soames nodded.  If there was a subject on which the Forsytes
+really agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.
+
+"You take care," said Nicholas, "or he'll turn up again.  Winifred
+had better have the tooth out, I should say.  No use preserving
+what's gone bad."
+
+Soames looked at him sideways.  His nerves, exacerbated by the
+interview he had just come through, disposed him to see a personal
+allusion in those words.
+
+"I'm advising her," he said shortly.
+
+"Well," said Nicholas, "the brougham's waiting; I must get home.
+I'm very poorly.  Remember me to your father."
+
+And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down the
+steps at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat by the
+junior porter.
+
+'I've never known Uncle Nicholas other than "very poorly,"' mused
+Soames, 'or seen him look other than everlasting.  What a family!
+Judging by him, I've got thirty-eight years of health before me.
+Well, I'm not going to waste them.'  And going over to a mirror he
+stood looking at his face.  Except for a line or two, and three or
+four grey hairs in his little dark moustache, had he aged any more
+than Irene?  The prime of life--he and she in the very prime of
+life!  And a fantastic thought shot into his mind.  Absurd!
+Idiotic!  But again it came.  And genuinely alarmed by the recur-
+rence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which presages a
+feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine.  Eleven stone!
+He had not varied two pounds in twenty years.  What age was she?
+Nearly thirty-seven--not too old to have a child--not at all!
+Thirty-seven on the ninth of next month.  He remembered her
+birthday well--he had always observed it religiously, even that
+last birthday so soon before she left him, when he was almost
+certain she was faithless.  Four birthdays in his house.  He had
+looked forward to them, because his gifts had meant a semblance of
+gratitude, a certain attempt at warmth.  Except, indeed, that last
+birthday--which had tempted him to be too religious!  And he shied
+away in thought.  Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds,
+from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.  And then he
+thought suddenly: 'I could send her a present for her birthday.
+After all, we're Christians!  Couldn't!--couldn't we join up
+again!'  And he uttered a deep sigh sitting there.  Annette!  Ah!
+but between him and Annette was the need for that wretched divorce
+suit!  And how?
+
+"A man can always work these things, if he'll take it on himself,"
+Jolyon had said.
+
+But why should he take the scandal on himself with his whole career
+as a pillar of the law at stake?  It was not fair!  It was quix-
+otic!  Twelve years' separation in which he had taken no steps to
+free himself put out of court the possibility of using her conduct
+with Bosinney as a ground for divorcing her.  By doing nothing to
+secure relief he had acquiesced, even if the evidence could now be
+gathered, which was more than doubtful.  Besides, his own pride
+would never let him use that old incident, he had suffered from it
+too much.  No!  Nothing but fresh misconduct on her part--but she
+had denied it; and--almost--he had believed her.  Hung up!  Utterly
+hung up!
+
+He rose from the scooped-out red velvet seat with a feeling of
+constriction about his vitals.  He would never sleep with this
+going on in him!  And, taking coat and hat again, he went out,
+moving eastward.  In Trafalgar Square he became aware of some
+special commotion travelling towards him out of the mouth of the
+Strand.  It materialised in newspaper men calling out so loudly
+that no words whatever could be heard.  He stopped to listen, and
+one came by.
+
+"Payper!  Special!  Ultimatium by Krooger!  Declaration of war!"
+Soames bought the paper.  There it was in the stop press....!  His
+first thought was: 'The Boers are committing suicide.'  His second:
+'Is there anything still I ought to sell?' If so he had missed the
+chance--there would certainly be a slump in the city to-morrow.  He
+swallowed this thought with a nod of defiance.  That ultimatum was
+insolent--sooner than let it pass he was prepared to lose money.
+They wanted a lesson, and they would get it; but it would take
+three months at least to bring them to heel.  There weren't the
+troops out there; always behind time, the Government!  Confound
+those newspaper rats!  What was the use of waking everybody up?
+Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough.  And he thought with
+alarm of his father.  They would cry it down Park Lane.  Hailing a
+hansom, he got in and told the man to drive there.
+
+James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating
+the news to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow.  He paused by
+after-thought to say:
+
+"What do you think of it, Warmson?"
+
+The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames had
+taken off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in a low
+voice: "Well, sir, they 'aven't a chance, of course; but I'm told
+they're very good shots.  I've got a son in the Inniskillings."
+
+"You, Warmson?  Why, I didn't know you were married."
+
+"No, sir.  I don't talk of it.  I expect he'll be going out."
+
+The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so
+little of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the
+slight shock of discovering that the war might touch one
+personally.  Born in the year of the Crimean War, he had only come
+to consciousness by the time the Indian Mutiny was over; since then
+the many little wars of the British Empire had been entirely
+professional, quite unconnected with the Forsytes and all they
+stood for in the body politic.  This war would surely be no
+exception.  But his mind ran hastily over his family.  Two of the
+Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other--it had
+always been a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction
+about the Yeomanry; they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform with
+silver about it, and rode horses.  And Archibald, he remembered,
+had once on a time joined the Militia, but had given it up because
+his father, Nicholas, had made such a fuss about his 'wasting his
+time peacocking about in a uniform.'  Recently he had heard
+somewhere that young Nicholas' eldest, very young Nicholas, had
+become a Volunteer.  'No,' thought Soames, mounting the stairs
+slowly, 'there's nothing in that!'
+
+He stood on the landing outside his parents' bed and dressing
+rooms, debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a
+reassuring word.  Opening the landing window, he listened.  The
+rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard, and with the
+thought, 'If these motor-cars increase, it'll affect house
+property,' he was about to pass on up to the room always kept ready
+for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse rushing call of a
+newsvendor.  There it was, and coming past the house!  He knocked
+on his mother's door and went in.
+
+His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the
+white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut.  He looked pink,
+and extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and
+pillow, out of which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned
+shoulders emerged in small peaks.  His eyes alone, grey and
+distrustful under their withered lids, were moving from the window
+to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking up and down, squeezing a
+rubber ball attached to a scent bottle.  The room reeked faintly of
+the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.
+
+"All right!" said Soames, "it's not a fire.  The Boers have
+declared war--that's all."
+
+Emily stopped her spraying.
+
+"Oh!" was all she said, and looked at James.
+
+Soames, too, looked at his father.  He was taking it differently
+from their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were
+working in him.
+
+"H'm!" he muttered suddenly, "I shan't live to see the end of
+this."
+
+"Nonsense, James!  It'll be over by Christmas."
+
+"What do you know about it?" James answered her with asperity.
+"It's a pretty mess at this time of night, too!"  He lapsed into
+silence, and his wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him to
+say: 'I can't tell--I don't know; I knew how it would be!'  But he
+did not.  The grey eyes shifted, evidently seeing nothing in the
+room; then movement occurred under the bedclothes, and the knees
+were drawn up suddenly to a great height.
+
+"They ought to send out Roberts.  It all comes from that fellow
+Gladstone and his Majuba."
+
+The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
+something of real anxiety.  It was as if he had said: 'I shall
+never see the old country peaceful and safe again.  I shall have to
+die before I know she's won.'  And in spite of the feeling that
+James must not be encouraged to be fussy, they were touched.
+Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father's hand which
+had emerged from under the bedclothes, long and wrinkled with
+veins.
+
+"Mark my words!" said James, "consols will go to par.  For all I
+know, Val may go and enlist."
+
+"Oh, come, James!" cried Emily, "you talk as if there were danger."
+
+Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.
+
+"Well," he muttered, "I told you how it would be.  I don't know,
+I'm sure nobody tells me anything.  Are you sleeping here, my boy?"
+
+The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal
+degree of anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping in
+the house, Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.
+
+The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy's had
+known for many a year.  On national occasions, such as this, it
+was, indeed, almost impossible to avoid going there.  Not that
+there was any danger or rather only just enough to make it
+necessary to assure each other that there was none.
+
+Nicholas was there early.  He had seen Soames the night before--
+Soames had said it was bound to come.  This old Kruger was in his
+dotage--why, he must be seventy-five if he was a day!
+
+(Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said?  He had had a fit
+after Majuba.  These Boers were a grasping lot!  The dark-haired
+Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the contradictious
+touch which became the free spirit of a daughter of Roger, chimed
+in:
+
+"Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas.  What price the Uitlanders?" What
+price; indeed!  A new expression, and believed to be due to her
+brother George.
+
+Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing.  Dear
+Mrs. MacAnder's boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could
+call him grasping.  At this Francie uttered one of her mots,
+scandalising, and so frequently repeated:
+
+"Well, his father's a Scotchman, and his mother's a cat."
+
+Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as
+for Nicholas, he pouted--witticism of which he was not the author
+was hardly to his taste.  Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived,
+followed almost immediately by young Nicholas.  On seeing his son,
+Nicholas rose.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said, "Nick here will tell you what'll
+win the race."  And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a pillar
+of accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was no more
+addicted to sport than his father had ever been, he departed.  Dear
+Nicholas!  What race was that?  Or was it only one of his jokes?
+He was a wonderful man for his age!  How many lumps would dear
+Marian take?  And how were Giles and Jesse?  Aunt Juley supposed
+their Yeomanry would be very busy now, guarding the coast, though
+of course the Boers had no ships.  But one never knew what the
+French might do if they had the chance, especially since that
+dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so terribly that he
+had made no investments for months afterwards.  It was the
+ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after everything had
+been done for them--Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he was so nice,
+Mrs. MacAnder had always said.  And Sir Alfred Milner sent out to
+talk to them--such a clever man!  She didn't know what they wanted.
+
+But at this moment occurred one of those sensations--so precious at
+Timothy's--which great occasions sometimes bring forth:
+
+"Miss June Forsyte."
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
+smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at
+the return of a prodigal June!  Well, this was a surprise!  Dear
+June--after all these years!  And how well she was looking!  Not
+changed at all!  It was almost on their lips to add, 'And how is
+your dear grandfather?' forgetting in that giddy moment that poor
+dear Jolyon had been in his grave for seven years now.
+
+Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June,
+with her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like
+flame, sat down, slight and short, on a gilt chair with a bead-
+worked seat, for all the world as if ten years had not elapsed
+since she had been to see them--ten years of travel and
+independence and devotion to lame ducks.  Those ducks of late had
+been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that her
+impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic
+outlook had become intense.  Indeed, she had almost ceased to
+believe that her family existed, and looked round her now with a
+sort of challenging directness which brought exquisite discomfort
+to the roomful.  She had not expected to meet any of them but 'the
+poor old things'; and why she had come to see them she hardly knew,
+except that, while on her way from Oxford Street to a studio in
+Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered them with compunction as
+two long-neglected old lame ducks.
+
+Aunt Juley broke the hush again.  "We've just been saying, dear,
+how dreadful it is about these Boers!  And what an impudent thing
+of that old Kruger!"
+
+"Impudent!" said June.  "I think he's quite right.  What business
+have we to meddle with them?  If he turned out all those wretched
+Uitlanders it would serve them right.  They're only after money."
+
+The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:
+
+"What?  Are you a pro-Boer?" (undoubtedly the first use of that
+expression).
+
+"Well!  Why can't we leave them alone?" said June, just as, in the
+open doorway, the maid said "Mr. Soames Forsyte."  Sensation on
+sensation!  Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how
+June and he would take this encounter, for it was shrewdly
+suspected, if not quite known, that they had not met since that old
+and lamentable affair of her fiance Bosinney with Soames' wife.
+They were seen to just touch each other's hands, and look each at
+the other's left eye only.  Aunt Juley came at once to the rescue:
+
+"Dear June is so original.  Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers are
+not to blame."
+
+"They only want their independence," said June; "and why shouldn't
+they have it?"
+
+"Because," answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side,
+"they happen to have agreed to our suzerainty."
+
+"Suzerainty!" repeated June scornfully; "we shouldn't like anyone's
+suzerainty over us."
+
+"They got advantages in payment," replied Soames; "a contract is a
+contract."
+
+"Contracts are not always just," fumed out June, "and when they're
+not, they ought to be broken.  The Boers are much the weaker.  We
+could afford to be generous."
+
+Soames sniffed.  "That's mere sentiment," he said.
+
+Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
+disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:
+
+"What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?"
+
+But June was not to be diverted.
+
+"I don't know why sentiment should be sneered at.  It's the best
+thing in the world."  She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley
+had to intervene again:
+
+"Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?"
+
+Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed her.
+Soames flushed.  To disclose the name of his latest purchases would
+be like walking into the jaws of disdain.  For somehow they all
+knew of June's predilection for 'genius' not yet on its legs, and
+her contempt for 'success' unless she had had a finger in securing
+it.
+
+"One or two," he muttered.
+
+But June's face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing its
+chance.  Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of Eric
+Cobbley--her last lame duck?  And she promptly opened her attack:
+Did Soames know his work?  It was so wonderful.  He was the coming
+man.
+
+Oh, yes, Soames knew his work.  It was in his view 'splashy,' and
+would never get hold of the public.
+
+June blazed up.
+
+"Of course it won't; that's the last thing one would wish for.  I
+thought you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer."
+
+"Of course Soames is a connoisseur," Aunt Juley said hastily; "he
+has wonderful taste--he can always tell beforehand what's going to
+be successful."
+
+"Oh!" gasped June, and sprang up from the bead-covered chair, "I
+hate that standard of success.  Why can't people buy things because
+they like them?"
+
+"You mean," said Francie, "because you like them."
+
+And in the slight pause young Nicholas was heard saying gently that
+Violet (his fourth) was taking lessons in pastel, he didn't know if
+they were any use.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Auntie," said June; "I must get on," and kissing
+her aunts, she looked defiantly round the room, said "Good-bye"
+again, and went.  A breeze seemed to pass out with her, as if
+everyone had sighed.
+
+The third sensation came before anyone had time to speak:
+
+"Mr. James Forsyte."
+
+James came in using a stick slightly and wrapped in a fur coat
+which gave him a fictitious bulk.
+
+Everyone stood up.  James was so old; and he had not been at
+Timothy's for nearly two years.
+
+"It's hot in here," he said.
+
+Soames divested him of his coat, and as he did so could not help
+admiring the glossy way his father was turned out.  James sat down,
+all knees, elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.
+
+"What's the meaning of that?" he said.
+
+Though there was no apparent sense in his words, they all knew that
+he was referring to June.  His eyes searched his son's face.
+
+"I thought I'd come and see for myself.  What have they answered
+Kruger?"
+
+Soames took out an evening paper, and read the headline.
+
+"'Instant action by our Government--state of war existing!'"
+
+"Ah!" said James, and sighed.  "I was afraid they'd cut and run
+like old Gladstone.  We shall finish with them this time."
+
+All stared at him.  James!  Always fussy, nervous, anxious!  James
+with his continual, 'I told you how it would be!' and his pessimism,
+and his cautious investments.  There was something uncanny about
+such resolution in this the oldest living Forsyte.
+
+"Where's Timothy?" said James.  "He ought to pay attention to
+this."
+
+Aunt Juley said she didn't know; Timothy had not said much at lunch
+to-day.  Aunt Hester rose and threaded her way out of the room, and
+Francie said rather maliciously:
+
+"The Boers are a hard nut to crack, Uncle James."
+
+"H'm!" muttered James.  "Where do you get your information?  Nobody
+tells me."
+
+Young Nicholas remarked in his mild voice that Nick (his eldest)
+was now going to drill regularly.
+
+"Ah!" muttered James, and stared before him--his thoughts were on
+Val.  "He's got to look after his mother," he said, "he's got no
+time for drilling and that, with that father of his."  This cryptic
+saying produced silence, until he spoke again.
+
+"What did June want here?"  And his eyes rested with suspicion on
+all of them in turn.  "Her father's a rich man now."  The
+conversation turned on Jolyon, and when he had been seen last.  It
+was supposed that he went abroad and saw all sorts of people now
+that his wife was dead; his water-colours were on the line, and he
+was a successful man.  Francie went so far as to say:
+
+"I should like to see him again; he was rather a dear."
+
+Aunt Juley recalled how he had gone to sleep on the sofa one day,
+where James was sitting.  He had always been very amiable; what did
+Soames think?
+
+Knowing that Jolyon was Irene's trustee, all felt the delicacy of
+this question, and looked at Soames with interest.  A faint pink
+had come up in his cheeks.
+
+"He's going grey," he said.
+
+Indeed!  Had Soames seen him?  Soames nodded, and the pink
+vanished.
+
+James said suddenly: "Well--I don't know, I can't tell."
+
+It so exactly expressed the sentiment of everybody present that
+there was something behind everything, that nobody responded.  But
+at this moment Aunt Hester returned.
+
+"Timothy," she said in a low voice, "Timothy has bought a map, and
+he's put in--he's put in three flags."
+
+Timothy had ....!  A sigh went round the company.
+
+If Timothy had indeed put in three flags already, well!--it showed
+what the nation could do when it was roused.  The war was as good
+as over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JOLYON FINDS OUT WHERE HE IS
+
+
+Jolyon stood at the window in Holly's old night nursery, converted
+into a studio, not because it had a north light, but for its view
+over the prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom.  He shifted to
+the side window which overlooked the stableyard, and whistled down
+to the dog Balthasar who lay for ever under the clock tower.  The
+old dog looked up and wagged his tail.  'Poor old boy!'  thought
+Jolyon, shifting back to the other window.
+
+He had been restless all this week, since his attempt to prosecute
+trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever acute,
+disturbed in his sense of compassion which was easily excited, and
+with a queer sensation as if his feeling for beauty had received
+some definite embodiment.  Autumn was getting hold of the old
+oak-tree, its leaves were browning.  Sunshine had been plentiful
+and hot this summer.  As with trees, so with men's lives!  'I ought
+to live long,' thought Jolyon; 'I'm getting mildewed for want of
+heat.  If I can't work, I shall be off to Paris.'  But memory of
+Paris gave him no pleasure.  Besides, how could he go?  He must
+stay and see what Soames was going to do.  'I'm her trustee.  I
+can't leave her unprotected,' he thought.  It had been striking him
+as curious how very clearly he could still see Irene in her little
+drawing-room which he had only twice entered.  Her beauty must have
+a sort of poignant harmony!  No literal portrait would ever do her
+justice; the essence of her was--ah I what?...  The noise of hoofs
+called him back to the other window.  Holly was riding into the
+yard on her long-tailed 'palfrey.'  She looked up and he waved to
+her.  She had been rather silent lately; getting old, he supposed,
+beginning to want her future, as they all did--youngsters!
+
+Time was certainly the devil!  And with the feeling that to waste
+this swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took up
+his brush.  But it was no use; he could not concentrate his eye--
+besides, the light was going.  'I'll go up to town,' he thought.
+In the hall a servant met him.
+
+"A lady to see you, sir; Mrs. Heron."
+
+Extraordinary coincidence!  Passing into the picture-gallery, as it
+was still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window.
+
+She came towards him saying:
+
+"I've been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden.
+I always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon."
+
+"You couldn't trespass here," replied Jolyon; "history makes that
+impossible.  I was just thinking of you."
+
+Irene smiled.  And it was as if something shone through; not mere
+spirituality--serener, completer, more alluring.
+
+"History!" she answered; "I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was
+for ever.  Well, it isn't.  Only aversion lasts."
+
+Jolyon stared at her.  Had she got over Bosinney at last?
+
+"Yes!" he said, "aversion's deeper than love or hate because it's a
+natural product of the nerves, and we don't change them."
+
+"I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me.  He said a
+thing that frightened me.  He said: 'You are still my wife!'"
+
+"What!" ejaculated Jolyon.  "You ought not to live alone."  And he
+continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where
+Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was
+why so many people looked on it as immoral.
+
+"What more?"
+
+"He asked me to shake hands.
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes.  When he came in I'm sure he didn't want to; he changed while
+he was there."
+
+"Ah! you certainly ought not to go on living there alone."
+
+"I know no woman I could ask; and I can't take a lover to order,
+Cousin Jolyon."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Jolyon.  "What a damnable position!  Will you
+stay to dinner?  No?  Well, let me see you back to town; I wanted
+to go up this evening."
+
+"Truly?"
+
+"Truly.  I'll be ready in five minutes."
+
+On that walk to the station they talked of pictures and music,
+contrasting the English and French characters and the difference in
+their attitude to Art.  But to Jolyon the colours in the hedges of
+the long straight lane, the twittering of chaffinches who kept pace
+with them, the perfume of weeds being already burned, the turn of
+her neck, the fascination of those dark eyes bent on him now and
+then, the lure of her whole figure, made a deeper impression than
+the remarks they exchanged.  Unconsciously he held himself
+straighter, walked with a more elastic step.
+
+In the train he put her through a sort of catechism as to what she
+did with her days.
+
+Made her dresses, shopped, visited a hospital, played her piano,
+translated from the French.
+
+She had regular work from a publisher, it seemed, which
+supplemented her income a little.  She seldom went out in the
+evening.  "I've been living alone so long, you see, that I don't
+mind it a bit.  I believe I'm naturally solitary."
+
+"I don't believe that," said Jolyon.  "Do you know many people?"
+
+"Very few."
+
+At Waterloo they took a hansom, and he drove with her to the door
+of her mansions.  Squeezing her hand at parting, he said:
+
+"You know, you could always come to us at Robin Hill; you must let
+me know everything that happens.  Good-bye, Irene."
+
+"Good-bye," she answered softly.
+
+Jolyon climbed back into his cab, wondering why he had not asked
+her to dine and go to the theatre with him.  Solitary, starved,
+hung-up life that she had!  "Hotch Potch Club," he said through the
+trap-door.  As his hansom debouched on to the Embankment, a man in
+top-hat and overcoat passed, walking quickly, so close to the wall
+that he seemed to be scraping it.
+
+'By Jove!' thought Jolyon; 'Soames himself!  What's he up to now?'
+And, stopping the cab round the corner, he got out and retraced his
+steps to where he could see the entrance to the mansions.  Soames
+had halted in front of them, and was looking up at the light in her
+windows.  'If he goes in,' thought Jolyon, 'what shall I do?  What
+have I the right to do?'  What the fellow had said was true.  She
+was still his wife, absolutely without protection from annoyance!
+'Well, if he goes in,' he thought, 'I follow.'  And he began moving
+towards the mansions.  Again Soames advanced; he was in the very
+entrance now.  But suddenly he stopped, spun round on his heel, and
+came back towards the river.  'What now?' thought Jolyon.  'In a
+dozen steps he'll recognise me.'  And he turned tail.  His cousin's
+footsteps kept pace with his own.  But he reached his cab, and got
+in before Soames had turned the corner.  "Go on!" he said through
+the trap.  Soames' figure ranged up alongside.
+
+"Hansom!" he said.  "Engaged?  Hallo!"
+
+"Hallo!" answered Jolyon.  "You?"
+
+The quick suspicion on his cousin's face, white in the lamplight,
+decided him.
+
+"I can give you a lift," he said, "if you're going West."
+
+"Thanks," answered Soames, and got in.
+
+"I've been seeing Irene," said Jolyon when the cab had started.
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"You went to see her yesterday yourself, I understand."
+
+
+"I did," said Soames; "she's my wife, you know."
+
+The tone, the half-lifted sneering lip, roused sudden anger in
+Jolyon; but he subdued it.
+
+"You ought to know best," he said, "but if you want a divorce it's
+not very wise to go seeing her, is it?  One can't run with the hare
+and hunt with the hounds?"
+
+"You're very good to warn me," said Soames, "but I have not made up
+my mind."
+
+"She has," said Jolyon, looking straight before him; "you can't
+take things up, you know, as they were twelve years ago."
+
+"That remains to be seen."
+
+"Look here!" said Jolyon, "she's in a damnable position, and I am
+the only person with any legal say in her affairs."
+
+"Except myself," retorted Soames, "who am also in a damnable
+position.  Hers is what she made for herself; mine what she made
+for me.  I am not at all sure that in her own interests I shan't
+require her to return to me."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole body.
+
+"I don't know what you may mean by 'what,'" answered Soames coldly;
+"your say in her affairs is confined to paying out her income;
+please bear that in mind.  In choosing not to disgrace her by a
+divorce, I retained my rights, and, as I say, I am not at all sure
+that I shan't require to exercise them."
+
+"My God!" ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.
+
+"Yes," said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice.
+"I've not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, 'The man of
+property'!  I'm not called names for nothing."
+
+"This is fantastic," murmured Jolyon.  Well, the fellow couldn't
+force his wife to live with him.  Those days were past, anyway!
+And he looked around at Soames with the thought: 'Is he real, this
+man?' But Soames looked very real, sitting square yet almost
+elegant with the clipped moustache on his pale face, and a tooth
+showing where a lip was lifted in a fried smile.  There was a long
+silence, while Jolyon thought: 'Instead of helping her, I've made
+things worse.'  Suddenly Soames said:
+
+"It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many ways."
+
+At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that he
+could barely sit still in the cab.  It was as if he were boxed up
+with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with that
+something in the national character which had always been to him
+revolting, something which he knew to be extremely natural and yet
+which seemed to him inexplicable--their intense belief in contracts
+and vested rights, their complacent sense of virtue in the exaction
+of those rights.  Here beside him in the cab was the very
+embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of the possessive
+instinct--his own kinsman, too!  It was uncanny and intolerable!
+'But there's something more in it than that!' he thought with a
+sick feeling.  'The dog, they say, returns to his vomit!  The sight
+of her has reawakened something.  Beauty!  The devil's in it!'
+
+"As I say," said Soames, "I have not made up my mind.  I shall be
+obliged if you will kindly leave her quite alone."
+
+Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed
+the thought, of one now.
+
+"I can give you no such promise," he said shortly.
+
+"Very well," said Soames, "then we know where we are.  I'll get
+down here."  And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign
+of farewell.  Jolyon travelled on to his Club.
+
+The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he
+paid no attention.  What could he do to help her?  If only his
+father were alive!  He could have done so much!  But why could he
+not do all that his father could have done?  Was he not old
+enough?--turned fifty and twice married, with grown-up daughters
+and a son.  'Queer,' he thought.  'If she were plain I shouldn't be
+thinking twice about it.  Beauty is the devil, when you're sen-
+sitive to it!'  And into the Club reading-room he went with a
+disturbed heart.  In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one
+summer afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and
+secret lecture he had given that young man in the interests of
+June, the diagnosis of the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he had
+wondered what sort of woman it was he was warning him against.  And
+now!  He was almost in want of a warning himself.  'It's deuced
+funny!'  he thought, 'really deuced funny!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOAMES DISCOVERS WHAT HE WANTS
+
+
+It is so much easier to say, "Then we know where we are," than to
+mean anything particular by the words.  And in saying them Soames
+did but vent the jealous rankling of his instincts.  He got out of
+the cab in a state of wary anger--with himself for not having seen
+Irene, with Jolyon for having seen her; and now with his inability
+to tell exactly what he wanted.
+
+He had abandoned the cab because he could not bear to remain seated
+beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he thought: 'I
+wouldn't trust that fellow Jolyon a yard.  Once outcast, always
+outcast!'  The chap had a natural sympathy with--with--laxity (he
+had shied at the word sin, because it was too melodramatic for use
+by a Forsyte).
+
+Indecision in desire was to him a new feeling.  He was like a child
+between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken away
+from him; and he was astonished at himself.  Only last Sunday
+desire had seemed simple--just his freedom and Annette.  'I'll go
+and dine there,' he thought.  To see her might bring back his
+singleness of intention, calm his exasperation, clear his mind.
+
+The restaurant was fairly full--a good many foreigners and folk
+whom, from their appearance, he took to be literary or artistic.
+Scraps of conversation came his way through the clatter of plates
+and glasses.  He distinctly heard the Boers sympathised with, the
+British Government blamed.  'Don't think much of their clientele,'
+he thought.  He went stolidly through his dinner and special coffee
+without making his presence known, and when at last he had
+finished, was careful not to be seen going towards the sanctum of
+Madame Lamotte.  They were, as he entered, having supper--such a
+much nicer-looking supper than the dinner he had eaten that he felt
+a kind of grief--and they greeted him with a surprise so seemingly
+genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: 'I believe they knew
+I was here all the time.'  He gave Annette a look furtive and
+searching.  So pretty, seemingly so candid; could she be angling
+for him?  He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:
+
+"I've been dining here."
+
+Really!  If she had only known!  There were dishes she could have
+recommended; what a pity!  Soames was confirmed in his suspicion.
+'I must look out what I'm doing!' he thought sharply.
+
+"Another little cup of very special coffee, monsieur; a liqueur,
+Grand Marnier?" and Madame Lamotte rose to order these delicacies.
+
+Alone with Annette Soames said, "Well, Annette?" with a defensive
+little smile about his lips.
+
+The girl blushed.  This, which last Sunday would have set his
+nerves tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has when
+a dog that he owns wriggles and looks at him.  He had a curious
+sense of power, as if he could have said to her, 'Come and kiss
+me,' and she would have come.  And yet--it was strange--but there
+seemed another face and form in the room too; and the itch in his
+nerves, was it for that--or for this?  He jerked his head towards
+the restaurant and said: "You have some queer customers.  Do you
+like this life?"
+
+Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with
+her fork.
+
+"No," she said, "I do not like it."
+
+'I've got her,' thought Soames, 'if I want her.  But do I want
+her?' She was graceful, she was pretty--very pretty; she was fresh,
+she had taste of a kind.  His eyes travelled round the little room;
+but the eyes of his mind went another journey--a half-light, and
+silvery walls, a satinwood piano, a woman standing against it,
+reined back as it were from him--a woman with white shoulders that
+he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought to know, and hair like
+dull dark amber.  And as in an artist who strives for the
+unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him at that
+moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.
+
+"Well," he said calmly, "you're young.  There's everything before
+you."
+
+Annette shook her head.
+
+"I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work.  I am
+not so in love with work as mother."
+
+"Your mother is a wonder," said Soames, faintly mocking; "she will
+never let failure lodge in her house."
+
+Annette sighed.  "It must be wonderful to be rich."
+
+"Oh!  You'll be rich some day," answered Soames, still with that
+faint mockery; "don't be afraid."
+
+Annette shrugged her shoulders.  "Monsieur is very kind."  And
+between her pouting lips she put a chocolate.
+
+'Yes, my dear,' thought Soames, 'they're very pretty.'
+
+Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that
+colloquy.  Soames did not stay long.
+
+Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a
+feeling of property improperly owned, he mused.  If only Irene had
+given him a son, he wouldn't now be squirming after women!  The
+thought had jumped out of its little dark sentry-box in his inner
+consciousness.  A son--something to look forward to, something to
+make the rest of life worth while, something to leave himself to,
+some perpetuity of self.  'If I had a son,' he thought bitterly,
+'a proper legal son, I could make shift to go on as I used.  One
+woman's much the same as another, after all.'  But as he walked he
+shook his head.  No!  One woman was not the same as another.  Many
+a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted
+married life; and he had always failed.  He was failing now.  He
+was trying to think Annette the same as that other.  But she was
+not, she had not the lure of that old passion.  'And Irene's my
+wife,' he thought, 'my legal wife.  I have done nothing to put her
+away from me.  Why shouldn't she come back to me?  It's the right
+thing, the lawful thing.  It makes no scandal, no disturbance.  If
+it's disagreeable to her--but why should it be?  I'm not a leper,
+and she--she's no longer in love!'  Why should he be put to the
+shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of the
+Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting
+to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her?
+To one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet
+possession of his own property with nothing given away to the world
+was intensely alluring.  'No,' he mused, 'I'm glad I went to see
+that girl.  I know now what I want most.  If only Irene will come
+back I'll be as considerate as she wishes; she could live her own
+life; but perhaps--perhaps she would come round to me.'  There was
+a lump in his throat.  And doggedly along by the railings of the
+Green Park, towards his father's house, he went, trying to tread on
+his shadow walking before him in the brilliant moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE THIRD GENERATION
+
+
+Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November
+afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up.  Jolly had just changed out
+of boating flannels and was on his way to the 'Frying-pan,' to
+which he had recently been elected.  Val had just changed out of
+riding clothes and was on his way to the fire--a bookmaker's in
+Cornmarket.
+
+"Hallo!" said Jolly.
+
+"Hallo!" replied Val.
+
+The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having
+invited the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen
+each other again under somewhat exotic circumstances.
+
+Over a tailor's in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged
+young beings called minors, whose inheritances are large, whose
+parents are dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts
+are vicious.  At nineteen he had commenced one of those careers
+attractive and inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single
+bankruptcy is good as a feast.  Already famous for having the only
+roulette table then to be found in Oxford, he was anticipating his
+expectations at a dazzling rate.  He out-crummed Crum, though of a
+sanguine and rather beefy type which lacked the latter's
+fascinating languor.  For Val it had been in the nature of baptism
+to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of confirmation
+to get back into college, after hours, through a window whose bars
+were deceptive.  Once, during that evening of delight, glancing up
+from the seductive green before him, he had caught sight, through a
+cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite.  'Rouge gagne,
+impair, et manque!'  He had not seen him again.
+
+"Come in to the Frying-pan and have tea," said Jolly, and they went
+in.
+
+A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an unseizable
+resemblance between these second cousins of the third generations
+of Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though Jolly's eyes
+were darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy.
+
+"Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please," said Jolly.
+
+"Have one of my cigarettes?" said Val.  "I saw you last night.  How
+did you do?"
+
+"I didn't play."
+
+"I won fifteen quid."
+
+Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had
+once heard his father make--'When you're fleeced you're sick, and
+when you fleece you're sorry--Jolly contented himself with:
+
+"Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap.  He's an
+awful fool."
+
+"Oh! I don't know," said Val, as one might speak in defence of a
+disparaged god; "he's a pretty good sport."
+
+They exchanged whiffs in silence.
+
+"You met my people, didn't you?" said Jolly.  "They're coming up
+to-morrow."
+
+Val grew a little red.
+
+"Really!  I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester
+November handicap."
+
+"Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races."
+
+"You can't make any money over them," said Val.
+
+"I hate the ring," said Jolly; "there's such a row and stink.  I
+like the paddock."
+
+"I like to back my judgment,"' answered Val.
+
+Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father's.
+
+"I haven't got any.  I always lose money if I bet."
+
+"You have to buy experience, of course."
+
+"Yes, but it's all messed-up with doing people in the eye."
+
+"Of course, or they'll do you--that's the excitement."
+
+Jolly looked a little scornful.
+
+"What do you do with yourself?  Row?"
+
+"No--ride, and drive about.  I'm going to play polo next term, if I
+can get my granddad to stump up."
+
+"That's old Uncle James, isn't it?  What's he like?"
+
+"Older than forty hills," said Val, "and always thinking he's going
+to be ruined."
+
+"I suppose my granddad and he were brothers."
+
+"I don't believe any of that old lot were sportsmen," said Val;
+they must have worshipped money."
+
+"Mine didn't!" said Jolly warmly.
+
+Val flipped the ash off his cigarette.
+
+"Money's only fit to spend," he said; "I wish the deuce I had
+more."
+
+Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had
+inherited from old Jolyon: One didn't talk about money!  And again
+there was silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered buns.
+
+"Where are your people going to stay?" asked Val, elaborately
+casual.
+
+"'Rainbow.'  What do you think of the war?"
+
+"Rotten, so far.  The Boers aren't sports a bit.  Why don't they
+come out into the open?"
+
+"Why should they?  They've got everything against them except their
+way of fighting.  I rather admire them."
+
+"They can ride and shoot," admitted Val, "but they're a lousy lot.
+Do you know Crum?"
+
+"Of Merton?  Only by sight.  He's in that fast set too, isn't he?
+Rather La-di-da and Brummagem."
+
+Val said fixedly: "He's a friend of mine."
+
+"Oh! Sorry!"  And they sat awkwardly staring past each other,
+having pitched on their pet points of snobbery.  For Jolly was
+forming himself unconsciously on a set whose motto was:
+
+'We defy you to bore us.  Life isn't half long enough, and we're
+going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and
+dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine.  We are
+"the best"--made of wire and whipcord.'  And Val was unconsciously
+forming himself on a set whose motto was: 'We defy you to interest
+or excite us.  We have had every sensation, or if we haven't, we
+pretend we have.  We are so exhausted with living that no hours are
+too small for us.  We will lose our shirts with equanimity.  We
+have flown fast and are past everything.  All is cigarette smoke.
+Bismillah!'  Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the English, was
+obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the close
+of a century ideals are mixed.  The aristocracy had already in the
+main adopted the 'jumping-Jesus' principle; though here and there
+one like Crum--who was an 'honourable'--stood starkly languid for
+that gambler's Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old
+'dandies' and of 'the mashers' in the eighties.  And round Crum
+were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a
+plutocratic following.
+
+But there was between the cousins another far less obvious
+antipathy--coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which
+each perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old
+feud persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed
+within them by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders.
+And Jolly, tinkling his teaspoon, was musing: 'His tie-pin and his
+waistcoat and his drawl and his betting--good Lord!'
+
+And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: 'He's rather a young
+beast!'
+
+"I suppose you'll be meeting your people?" he said, getting up.
+"I wish you'd tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.--not
+that there's anything much there--if they'd care to come."
+
+"Thanks, I'll ask them."
+
+"Would they lunch?  I've got rather a decent scout."
+
+Jolly doubted if they would have time.
+
+"You'll ask them, though?"
+
+"Very good of you," said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not
+go; but, instinctively polite, he added: "You'd better come and
+have dinner with us to-morrow."
+
+"Rather.  What time?"
+
+"Seven-thirty."
+
+"Dress?"
+
+"No."  And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.
+
+Holly and her father arrived by a midday train.  It was her first
+visit to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent,
+looking almost shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful
+place.  After lunch she wandered, examining his household gods with
+intense curiosity.  Jolly's sitting-room was panelled, and Art
+represented by a set of Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old
+Jolyon, and by college photographs--of young men, live young men, a
+little heroic, and to be compared with her memories of Val.  Jolyon
+also scrutinised with care that evidence of his boy's character and
+tastes.
+
+Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set
+forth to the river.  Holly, between her brother and her father,
+felt elated when heads were turned and eyes rested on her.  That
+they might see him to the best advantage they left him at the Barge
+and crossed the river to the towing-path.  Slight in build--for of
+all the Forsytes only old Swithin and George were beefy--Jolly was
+rowing 'Two' in a trial eight.  He looked very earnest and
+strenuous.  With pride Jolyon thought him the best-looking boy of
+the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck by one or two
+of the others, but would not have said so for the world.  The river
+was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still
+beautiful with colour.  Distinguished peace clung around the old
+city; Jolyon promised himself a day's sketching if the weather
+held.  The Eight passed a second time, spurting home along the
+Barges--Jolly's face was very set, so as not to show that he was
+blown.  They returned across the river and waited for him.
+
+"Oh!" said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, "I had to ask that
+chap Val Dartie to dine with us to-night.  He wanted to give you
+lunch and show you B.N.C., so I thought I'd better; then you
+needn't go.  I don't like him much."
+
+Holly's rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh! I don't know.  He seems to me rather showy and bad form.  What
+are his people like, Dad?  He's only a second cousin, isn't he?"
+
+Jolyon took refuge in a smile.
+
+"Ask Holly," he said; "she saw his uncle."
+
+"I liked Val," Holly answered, staring at the ground before her;
+"his uncle looked--awfully different."  She stole a glance at Jolly
+from under her lashes.
+
+"Did you ever," said Jolyon with whimsical intention, "hear our
+family history, my dears?  It's quite a fairy tale.  The first
+Jolyon Forsyte--at all events the first we know anything of, and
+that would be your great-great-grandfather--dwelt in the land of
+Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an
+'agriculturalist,' as your great-aunt put it, and the son of an
+agriculturist--farmers, in fact; your grandfather used to call
+them, 'Very small beer,'"  He looked at Jolly to see how his
+lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly's
+malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother's face.
+
+"We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it
+was before the Industrial Era began.  The second Jolyon Forsyte--
+your great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset
+Forsyte--built houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children,
+and migrated to London town.  It is known that he drank sherry.  We
+may suppose him representing the England of Napoleon's wars, and
+general unrest.  The eldest of his six sons was the third Jolyon,
+your grandfather, my dears--tea merchant and chairman of companies,
+one of the soundest Englishmen who ever lived--and to me the
+dearest."  Jolyon's voice had lost its irony, and his son and
+daughter gazed at him solemnly, "He was just and tenacious, tender
+and young at heart.  You remember him, and I remember him.  Pass to
+the others!  Your great-uncle James, that's young Val's grand-
+father, had a son called Soames--whereby hangs a tale of no love
+lost, and I don't think I'll tell it you.  James and the other
+eight children of 'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five
+alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its
+principles of trade and individualism at five per cent. and your
+money back--if you know what that means.  At all events they've
+turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in
+the course of their long lives.  They never did a wild thing--
+unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe was once
+swindled at thimble-rig, and was called 'Four-in-hand Forsyte'
+because he drove a pair.  Their day is passing, and their type, not
+altogether for the advantage of the country.  They were pedestrian,
+but they too were sound.  I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte--a poor
+holder of the name--"
+
+"No, Dad," said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand.
+
+"Yes," repeated Jolyon, "a poor specimen, representing, I'm afraid,
+nothing but the end of the century, unearned income, amateurism,
+and individual liberty--a different thing from individualism,
+Jolly.  You are the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man, and you open the
+ball of the new century."
+
+As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly
+said: "It's fascinating, Dad."
+
+None of them quite knew what she meant.  Jolly was grave.
+
+The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for
+lack of modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-
+room, in which Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone,
+when the only guest arrived.  Rather as one would touch a moth, Val
+took her hand.  And wouldn't she wear this 'measly flower'?  It
+would look ripping in her hair.  He removed a gardenia from his
+coat.
+
+"Oh!  No, thank you--I couldn't!"  But she took it and pinned it at
+her neck, having suddenly remembered that word 'showy'!  Val's
+buttonhole would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like
+him.  Did she realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her
+presence, and was that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction
+for her?
+
+"I never said anything about our ride, Val."
+
+"Rather not!  It's just between us."
+
+By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was
+giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too--the
+wish to make him happy.
+
+"Do tell me about Oxford.  It must be ever so lovely."
+
+Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked;
+the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps.
+"Only," he added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could come
+down and see you."
+
+Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.
+
+"You haven't forgotten," he said, suddenly gathering courage, "that
+we're going mad-rabbiting together?"
+
+Holly smiled.
+
+"Oh!  That was only make-believe.  One can't do that sort of thing
+after one's grown up, you know."
+
+"Dash it!  cousins can," said Val.  "Next Long Vac.--it begins in
+June, you know, and goes on for ever--we'll watch our chance."
+
+But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly
+shook her head.  "It won't come off," she murmured.
+
+"Won't it!" said Val fervently; "who's going to stop it?  Not your
+father or your brother."
+
+At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into
+Val's patent leather and Holly's white satin toes, where it itched
+and tingled during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness.
+
+Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism
+between the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became un-
+consciously ironical, which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth.
+A letter, handed to him after dinner, reduced him to a silence
+hardly broken till Jolly and Val rose to go.  He went out with
+them, smoking his cigar, and walked with his son to the gates of
+Christ Church.  Turning back, he took out the letter and read it
+again beneath a lamp.
+
+
+"DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"Soames came again to-night--my thirty-seventh birthday.  You were
+right, I mustn't stay here.  I'm going to-morrow to the Piedmont
+Hotel, but I won't go abroad without seeing you.  I feel lonely and
+down-hearted.
+
+"Yours affectionately,
+
+"IRENE."
+
+
+He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished
+at the violence of his feelings.  What had the fellow said or done?
+
+He turned, into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of
+spires and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or
+darkshadowed in the strong moonlight.  In this very heart of
+England's gentility it was difficult to realise that a lonely woman
+could be importuned or hunted, but what else could her letter mean?
+Soames must have been pressing her to go back to him again, with
+public opinion and the Law on his side, too!  'Eighteen-ninety-
+nine!,' he thought, gazing at the broken glass shining on the top
+of a villa garden wall; 'but when it comes to property we're still
+a heathen people!  I'll go up to-morrow morning.  I dare say it'll
+be best for her to go abroad.'  Yet the thought displeased him.
+Why should Soames hunt her out of England!  Besides, he might
+follow, and out there she would be still more helpless against the
+attentions of her own husband!  'I must tread warily,' he thought;
+'that fellow could make himself very nasty.  I didn't like his
+manner in the cab the other night.'  His thoughts turned to his
+daughter June.  Could she help?  Once on a time Irene had been her
+greatest friend, and now she was a 'lame duck,' such as must appeal
+to June's nature!  He determined to wire to his daughter to meet
+him at Paddington Station.  Retracing his steps towards the Rainbow
+he questioned his own sensations.  Would he be upsetting himself
+over every woman in like case?  No! he would not.  The candour of
+this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had gone
+up to bed, he sought his own room.  But he could not sleep, and sat
+for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the
+moonlight on the roofs.
+
+Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and
+below Val's eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to
+make Jolly like him better.  The scent of the gardenia was strong
+in her little bedroom, and pleasant to her.
+
+And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was
+gazing at a moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing
+instead Holly, slim and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire
+when he first went in.
+
+But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand
+beneath his cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a
+race against him, while his father was calling from the towpath:
+'Two!  Get your hands away there, bless you!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SOAMES PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH
+
+
+Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the
+West End of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames
+the most 'attractive' word just coming into fashion.  He had never
+had his Uncle Swithin's taste in precious stones, and the
+abandonment by Irene when she left his house in 1887 of all the
+glittering things he had given her had disgusted him with this form
+of invest-ment.  But he still knew a diamond when he saw one, and
+during the week before her birthday he had taken occasion, on his
+way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally a little
+before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one's money's
+worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods.
+
+Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him
+more and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his life,
+the supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong.  And,
+alongside the dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never with
+his self-preservation, now or never if he were to range himself and
+found a family, went the secret urge of his senses roused by the
+sight of her who had once been a passionately desired wife, and the
+conviction that it was a sin against common sense and the decent
+secrecy of Forsytes to waste the wife he had.
+
+In an opinion on Winifred's case, Dreamer, Q.C.--he would much have
+preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late in the
+day as to rouse the usual suspicion of a political job)--had
+advised that they should go forward and obtain restitution of
+conjugal rights, a point which to Soames had never been in doubt.
+When they had obtained a decree to that effect they must wait to
+see if it was obeyed.  If not, it would constitute legal desertion,
+and they should obtain evidence of misconduct and file their
+petition for divorce.  All of which Soames knew perfectly well.
+They had marked him ten and one.  This simplicity in his sister's
+case only made him the more desperate about the difficulty in his
+own.  Everything, in fact, was driving him towards the simple
+solution of Irene's return.  If it were still against the grain
+with her, had he not feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to
+forget?  He at least had never injured her, and this was a world of
+compromise!  He could offer her so much more than she had now.  He
+would be prepared to make a liberal settlement on her which could
+not be upset.  He often scrutinised his image in these days.  He
+had never been a peacock like that fellow Dartie, or fancied
+himself a woman's man, but he had a certain belief in his own
+appearance--not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved,
+neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind.
+The Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his
+eyes, virtues.  So far as he could tell there was no feature of him
+which need inspire dislike.
+
+Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural,
+even if far-fetched in their inception.  If he could only give
+tangible proof enough of his determination to let bygones be
+bygones, and to do all in his power to please her, why should she
+not come back to him?
+
+He entered Gaves and Cortegal's therefore, on the morning of
+November the 9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch.  "Four
+twenty-five and dirt cheap, sir, at the money.  It's a lady's
+brooch."  There was that in his mood which made him accept without
+demur.  And he went on into the Poultry with the flat green morocco
+case in his breast pocket.  Several times that day he opened it to
+look at the seven soft shining stones in their velvet oval nest.
+
+"If the lady doesn't like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time.
+But there's no fear of that."  If only there were not!  He got
+through a vast amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew.
+A cablegram came while he was in the office with details from the
+agent in Buenos Aires, and the name and address of a stewardess who
+would be prepared to swear to what was necessary.  It was a timely
+spur to Soames, with his rooted distaste for the washing of dirty
+linen in public.  And when he set forth by Underground to Victoria
+Station he received a fresh impetus towards the renewal of his
+married life from the account in his evening paper of a fashionable
+divorce suit.  The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety
+and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and
+solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane.  He neither could nor
+would breath a word to his people of his intention--too reticent
+and proud--but the thought that at least they would be glad if they
+knew, and wish him luck, was heartening.
+
+James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of
+Kruger's ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor
+success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in The
+Times.  He didn't know where it would end.  Soames sought to cheer
+him by the continual use of the word Buller.  But James couldn't
+tell!  There was Colley--and he got stuck on that hill, and this
+Ladysmith was down in a hollow, and altogether it looked to him a
+'pretty kettle of fish'; he thought they ought to be sending the
+sailors--they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea.
+Soames shifted the ground of consolation.  Winifred had heard from
+Val that there had been a 'rag' and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at
+Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face.
+
+"Ah!" James muttered, "he's a clever little chap."  But he shook
+his head shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn't know what
+would become of him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on
+that Soames had never had a boy.  He would have liked a grandson of
+his own name.  And now--well, there it was!
+
+Soames flinched.  He had not expected such a challenge to disclose
+the secret in his heart.  And Emily, who saw him wince, said:
+
+"Nonsense, James; don't talk like that!"
+
+But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on.  There were
+Roger and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons.  And Swithin
+and Timothy had never married.  He had done his best; but he would
+soon be gone now.  And, as though he had uttered words of profound
+consolation, he was silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece
+of bread, and swallowing the bread.
+
+Soames excused himself directly after dinner.  It was not really
+cold, but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him
+against the fits of nervous shivering to which he had been subject
+all day.  Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than
+in an ordinary black overcoat.  Then, feeling the morocco case flat
+against his heart, he sallied forth.  He was no smoker, but he lit
+a cigarette, and smoked it gingerly as he walked along.  He moved
+slowly down the Row towards Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to
+Chelsea at nine-fifteen.  What did she do with herself evening
+after evening in that little hole?  How mysterious women were!  One
+lived alongside and knew nothing of them.  What could she have seen
+in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad?  For there was madness
+after all in what she had done--crazy moonstruck madness, in which
+all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his life
+ruined!  And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation,
+as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the
+Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence,
+forgiving and forgetting, and becoming  the godfather of her
+future.  Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the
+moon-light struck down clear and white, he took out once more the
+morocco case, and let the beams draw colour from those stones.
+Yes, they were of the first water!  But, at the hard closing snap
+of the case, another cold shiver ran through his nerves; and he
+walked on faster, clenching his gloved hands in the pockets of his
+coat, almost hoping she would not be in.  The thought of how
+mysterious she was again beset him.  Dining alone there night after
+night--in an evening dress, too, as if she were making believe to
+be in society!  Playing the piano--to herself!  Not even a dog or
+cat, so far as he had seen.  And that reminded him suddenly of the
+mare he kept for station work at Mapledurham.  If ever he went to
+the stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her
+home journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if longing
+to be back and lonely in her stable!  'I would treat her well,' he
+thought incoherently.  'I would be very careful.'  And all that
+capacity for home life of which a mocking Fate seemed for ever to
+have deprived him swelled suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed
+dreams opposite South Kensington Station.  In the King's Road a man
+came slithering out of a public house playing a concertina.  Soames
+watched him for a moment dance crazily on the pavement to his own
+drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with
+this piece of drunken foolery.  A night in the lock-up!  What asses
+people were!  But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance,
+and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street.
+'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously.  'To have
+ruffians like that about, with women out alone!'  A woman's figure
+in front had induced this thought.  Her walk seemed oddly familiar,
+and when she turned the corner for which he was bound, his heart
+began to, beat.  He hastened on to the corner to make certain.
+Yes!  It was Irene; he could not mistake her walk in that little
+drab street.  She threaded two more turnings, and from the last
+corner he saw her enter her block of flats.  To make sure of her
+now, he ran those few paces, hurried up the stairs, and caught her
+standing at her door.  He heard the latchkey in the lock, and
+reached her side just as she turned round, startled, in the open
+doorway.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," he said, breathless.  "I happened to see you.
+Let me come in a minute."
+
+She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless, her
+eyes widened by alarm.  Then seeming to master herself, she
+inclined her head, and said: "Very well."
+
+Soames closed the door.  He, too, had need to recover, and when she
+had passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute, taking deep
+breaths to still the beating of his heart.  At this moment, so
+fraught with the future, to take out that morocco case seemed
+crude.  Yet, not to take it out left him there before her with no
+preliminary excuse for coming.  And in this dilemma he was seized
+with impatience at all this paraphernalia of excuse and
+justification.  This was a scene--it could be nothing else, and he
+must face it.  He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically
+soft:
+
+"Why have you come again?  Didn't you understand that I would
+rather you did not?"
+
+He noticed her clothes--a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa,
+a small round toque of the same.  They suited her admirably.  She
+had money to spare for dress, evidently!  He said abruptly:
+
+"It's your birthday.  I brought you this," and he held out to her
+the green morocco case.
+
+"Oh!  No-no!"
+
+Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale
+grey velvet.
+
+"Why not?" he said.  "Just as a sign that you don't bear me ill-
+feeling any longer."
+
+"I couldn't."
+
+Soames took it out of the case.
+
+"Let me just see how it looks."
+
+She shrank back.
+
+He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the
+front of her dress.  She shrank again.
+
+Soames dropped his hand.
+
+"Irene," he said, "let bygones be bygones.  If I can, surely you
+might.  Let's begin again, as if nothing had been.  Won't you?"
+His voice was wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in
+them a sort of supplication.
+
+She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall,
+gave a little gulp, and that was all her answer.  Soames went on:
+
+"Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little
+hole?  Come back to me, and I'll give you all you want.  You shall
+live your own life; I swear it."
+
+He saw her face quiver ironically.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, "but I mean it this time.  I'll only ask one
+thing.  I just want--I just want a son.  Don't look like that!  I
+want one.  It's hard."  His voice had grown hurried, so that he
+hardly knew it for his own, and twice he jerked his head back as if
+struggling for breath.  It was the sight of her eyes fixed on him,
+dark with a sort of fascinated fright, which pulled him together
+and changed that painful incoherence to anger.
+
+"Is it so very unnatural?" he said between his teeth, "Is it
+unnatural to want a child from one's own wife?  You wrecked our
+life and put this blight on everything.  We go on only half alive,
+and without any future.  Is it so very unflattering to you that in
+spite of everything I--I still want you for my wife?  Speak, for
+Goodness' sake! do speak."
+
+Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.
+
+"I don't want to frighten you," said Soames more gently.  "Heaven
+knows.  I only want you to see that I can't go on like this.  I
+want you back.  I want you."
+
+Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but
+her eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to
+keep him at bay.  And all those years, barren and bitter, since--
+ah!  when?--almost since he had first known her, surged up in one
+great wave of recollection in Soames; and a spasm that for his life
+he could not control constricted his face.
+
+"It's not too late," he said; "it's not--if you'll only believe
+it."
+
+Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing
+gesture in front of her breast.  Soames seized them.
+
+"Don't!" she said under her breath.  But he stood holding on to
+them, trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver.  Then she
+said quietly:
+
+"I am alone here.  You won't behave again as you once behaved."
+
+Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned
+away.  Was it possible that there could be such relentless
+unforgiveness!  Could that one act of violent possession be still
+alive within her?  Did it bar him thus utterly?  And doggedly he
+said, without looking up:
+
+"I am not going till you've answered me.  I am offering what few
+men would bring themselves to offer, I want a--a reasonable
+answer."
+
+And almost with surprise he heard her say:
+
+"You can't have a reasonable answer.  Reason has nothing to do with
+it.  You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die."
+
+Soames stared at her.
+
+"Oh!" he said.  And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of
+speech and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man
+has received a deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is going
+to take it, or rather what it is going to do with him.
+
+"Oh!" he said again, "as bad as that?  Indeed!  You would rather
+die.  That's pretty!"
+
+"I am sorry.  You wanted me to answer.  I can't help the truth, can
+I?"
+
+At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to
+actuality.  He snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in
+his pocket.
+
+"The truth!" he said; "there's no such thing with women.  It's
+nerves-nerves."
+
+He heard the whisper:
+
+"Yes; nerves don't lie.  Haven't you discovered that?" He was
+silent, obsessed by the thought: 'I will hate this woman.  I will
+hate her.'  That was the trouble!  If only he could!  He shot a
+glance at her who stood unmoving against the wall with her head up
+and her hands clasped, for all the world as if she were going to be
+shot.  And he said quickly:
+
+"I don't believe a word of it.  You have a lover.  If you hadn't,
+you wouldn't be such a--such a little idiot."  He was conscious,
+before the expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of
+a non-sequitur, and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal
+freedom of his connubial days.  He turned away to the door.  But he
+could not go out.  Something within him--that most deep and secret
+Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the impossibility
+of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his own tenacity--
+prevented him.  He turned about again, and there stood, with his
+back against the door, as hers was against the wall opposite, quite
+unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by the whole
+width of the room.
+
+"Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?" he said.
+
+Irene's lips quivered; then she answered slowly:
+
+"Do you ever think that I found out my mistake--my hopeless,
+terrible mistake--the very first week of our marriage; that I went
+on trying three years--you know I went on trying?  Was it for
+myself?"
+
+Soames gritted his teeth.  "God knows what it was.  I've never
+understood you; I shall never understand you.  You had everything
+you wanted; and you can have it again, and more.  What's the matter
+with me?  I ask you a plain question: What is it?"  Unconscious of
+the pathos in that enquiry, he went on passionately: "I'm not lame,
+I'm not loathsome, I'm not a boor, I'm not a fool.  What is it?
+What's the mystery about me?"
+
+Her answer was a long sigh.
+
+He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full
+of expression.  "When I came here to-night I was--I hoped--I meant
+everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair
+again.  And you meet me with 'nerves,' and silence, and sighs.
+There's nothing tangible.  It's like--it's like a spider's web."
+
+"Yes."
+
+That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.
+
+"Well, I don't choose to be in a spider's web.  I'll cut it."  He
+walked straight up to her.  "Now!"  What he had gone up to her to
+do he really did not know.  But when he was close, the old familiar
+scent of her clothes suddenly affected him.  He put his hands on
+her shoulders and bent forward to kiss her.  He kissed not her
+lips, but a little hard line where the lips had been drawn in; then
+his face was pressed away by her hands; he heard her say: "Oh!
+No!"  Shame, compunction, sense of futility flooded his whole
+being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+VISIT TO IRENE
+
+
+Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington.  She had
+received his telegram while at breakfast.  Her abode--a studio and
+two bedrooms in a St. John's Wood garden--had been selected by her
+for the complete independence which it guaranteed.  Unwatched by
+Mrs. Grundy, unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive
+lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck
+without studio of its own made use of June's.  She enjoyed her
+freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the
+warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which--
+given her Forsyte tenacity--he must surely have tired, she now
+expended in championship of the underdogs and budding 'geniuses' of
+the artistic world.  She lived, in fact, to turn ducks into the
+swans she believed they were.  The very fervour of her protection
+warped her judgments.  But she was loyal and liberal; her small
+eager hand was ever against the oppressions of academic and
+commercial opinion, and though her income was considerable, her
+bank balance was often a minus quantity.
+
+She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit to
+Eric Cobbley.  A miserable Gallery had refused to let that
+straight-haired genius have his one-man show after all.  Its
+impudent manager, after visiting his studio, had expressed the
+opinion that it would only be a 'one-horse show from the selling
+point of view.'  This crowning example of commercial cowardice
+towards her favourite lame duck--and he so hard up, with a wife and
+two children, that he had caused her account to be overdrawn--was
+still making the blood glow in her small, resolute face, and her
+red-gold hair to shine more than ever.  She gave her father a hug,
+and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as
+he with her.  It became at once a question which would fry them
+first.
+
+Jolyon had reached the words: "My dear, I want you to come with
+me," when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes
+moving from side to side--like the tail of a preoccupied cat that
+she was not attending.  "Dad, is it true that I absolutely can't
+get at any of my money?"
+
+"Only the income, fortunately, my love."
+
+"How perfectly beastly!  Can't it be done somehow?  There must be a
+way.  I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds."
+
+"A small Gallery," murmured Jolyon, "seems a modest desire.  But
+your grandfather foresaw it."
+
+"I think," cried June vigorously, "that all this care about money
+is awful, when there's so much genius in the world simply crushed
+out for want of a little.  I shall never marry and have children;
+why shouldn't I be able to do some good instead of having it all
+tied up in case of things which will never come off?"
+
+"Our name is Forsyte, my dear," replied Jolyon in the ironical
+voice to which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown
+accustomed; "and Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle their
+property that their grandchildren, in case they should die before
+their parents, have to make wills leaving the property that will
+only come to themselves when their parents die.  Do you follow
+that?  Nor do I, but it's a fact, anyway; we live by the principle
+that so long as there is a possibility of keeping wealth in the
+family it must not go out; if you die unmarried, your money goes to
+Jolly and Holly and their children if they marry.  Isn't it
+pleasant to know that whatever you do you can none of you be
+destitute?"
+
+"But can't I borrow the money?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head.  "You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if you
+could manage it out of your income."
+
+June uttered a contemptuous sound.
+
+"Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with."
+
+"My dear child," murmured Jolyon, "wouldn't it come to the same
+thing?"
+
+"No," said June shrewdly, "I could buy for ten thousand; that would
+only be four hundred a year.  But I should have to pay a thousand a
+year rent, and that would only leave me five hundred.  If I had the
+Gallery, Dad, think what I could do.  I could make Eric Cobbley's
+name in no time, and ever so many others."
+
+"Names worth making make themselves in time."
+
+"When they're dead."
+
+"Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having his
+name made?"
+
+"Yes, you," said June, pressing his arm.
+
+Jolyon started.  'I?' he thought.  'Oh!  Ah!  Now she's going to
+ask me to do something.  We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our
+different ways.'
+
+June came closer to him in the cab.
+
+"Darling," she said, "you buy the Gallery, and I'll pay you four
+hundred a year for it.  Then neither of us will be any the worse
+off.  Besides, it's a splendid investment."
+
+Jolyon wriggled.  "Don't you think," he said, "that for an artist
+to buy a Gallery is a bit dubious?  Besides, ten thousand pounds is
+a lump, and I'm not a commercial character."
+
+June looked at him with admiring appraisement.
+
+"Of course you're not, but you're awfully businesslike.  And I'm
+sure we could make it pay.  It'll be a perfect way of scoring off
+those wretched dealers and people."  And again she squeezed her
+father's arm.
+
+Jolyon's face expressed quizzical despair.
+
+"Where is this desirable Gallery?  Splendidly situated, I suppose?"
+
+"Just off Cork Street."
+
+'Ah!'  thought Jolyon, 'I knew it was just off somewhere.  Now for
+what I want out of her!'
+
+"Well, I'll think of it, but not just now.  You remember Irene?  I
+want you to come with me and see her.  Soames is after her again.
+She might be safer if we could give her asylum somewhere."
+
+The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most
+calculated to rouse June's interest.
+
+"Irene!  I haven't seen her since!  Of course!  I'd love to help
+her."
+
+It was Jolyon's turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for
+this spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting.
+
+"Irene is proud," he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden doubt
+of June's discretion; "she's difficult to help.  We must tread
+gently.  This is the place.  I wired her to expect us.  Let's send
+up our cards."
+
+"I can't bear Soames," said June as she got out; "he sneers at
+everything that isn't successful"
+
+Irene was in what was called the 'Ladies' drawing-room' of the
+Piedmont Hotel.
+
+Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her
+former friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a sofa
+never sat on since the hotel's foundation.  Jolyon could see that
+Irene was deeply affected by this simple forgiveness.
+
+"So Soames has been worrying you?" he said.
+
+"I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to him."
+
+"You're not going, of course?" cried June.
+
+Irene smiled faintly and shook her head.  "But his position is
+horrible," she murmured.
+
+"It's his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he could."
+
+Jolyon remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped
+that no divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover's name.
+
+"Let us hear what Irene is going to do," he said.
+
+Irene's lips quivered, but she spoke calmly.
+
+"I'd better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me."
+
+"How horrible!"   cried June.
+
+"What else can I do?"
+
+"Out of the question," said Jolyon very quietly, "sans amour."
+
+He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she half
+turned her back on them, and stood regaining control of herself.
+
+June said suddenly:
+
+"Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone.
+What does he want at his age?"
+
+"A child.  It's not unnatural"
+
+"A child!" cried June scornfully.  "Of course!  To leave his money
+to.  If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have
+one; then you can divorce him, and he can marry her."
+
+Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring June-
+-her violent partizanship was fighting Soames' battle.
+
+"It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill,
+and see how things shape."
+
+"Of course," said June; "only...."
+
+Irene looked full at Jolyon--in all his many attempts afterwards to
+analyze that glance he never could succeed.
+
+"No!  I should only bring trouble on you all.  I will go abroad."
+
+He knew from her voice that this was final.  The irrelevant thought
+flashed through him: 'Well, I could see her there.'  But he said:
+
+"Don't you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he
+followed?"
+
+"I don't know.  I can but try."
+
+June sprang up and paced the room.  "It's all horrible," she said.
+"Why should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless year
+after year by this disgusting sanctimonious law?"  But someone had
+come into the room, and June came to a standstill.  Jolyon went up
+to Irene:
+
+"Do you want money?"  No.
+
+"And would you like me to let your fiat?"
+
+"Yes, Jolyon, please."
+
+"When shall you be going?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"You won't go back there in the meantime, will you?"  This he said
+with an anxiety strange to himself.
+
+"No; I've got all I want here."
+
+"You'll send me your address?"
+
+She put out her hand to him.  "I feel you're a rock."
+
+"Built on sand," answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; "but it's
+a pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that.  And if you
+change your mind....!  Come along, June; say good-bye."
+
+June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene.
+
+"Don't think of him," she said under her breath; "enjoy yourself,
+and bless you!"
+
+With a memory of tears in Irene's eyes, and of a smile on her lips,
+they went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had
+interrupted the interview and was turning over the papers on the
+table.
+
+Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed:
+
+"Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!"
+
+But Jolyon did not respond.  He had something of his father's
+balance, and could see things impartially even when his emotions
+were roused.  Irene was right; Soames' position was as bad or worse
+than her own.  As for the law--it catered for a human nature of
+which it took a naturally low view.  And, feeling that if he stayed
+in his daughter's company he would in one way or another commit an
+indiscretion, he told her he must catch his train back to Oxford;
+and hailing a cab, left her to Turner's water-colours, with the
+promise that he would think over that Gallery.
+
+But he thought over Irene instead.  Pity, they said, was akin to
+love!  If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he
+pitied her profoundly.  To think of her drifting about Europe so
+handicapped and lonely!  'I hope to goodness she'll keep her head!'
+he thought; 'she might easily grow desperate.'  In fact, now that
+she had cut loose from her poor threads of occupation, he couldn't
+imagine how she would go on--so beautiful a creature, hopeless, and
+fair game for anyone!  In his exasperation was more than a little
+fear and jealousy.  Women did strange things when they were driven
+into corners.  'I wonder what Soames will do now!'  he thought.  'A
+rotten, idiotic state of things!  And I suppose they would say it
+was her own fault.'  Very preoccupied and sore at heart, he got
+into his train, mislaid his ticket, and on the platform at Oxford
+took his hat off to a lady whose face he seemed to remember without
+being able to put a name to her, not even when he saw her having
+tea at the Rainbow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WHERE FORSYTES FEAR TO TREAD
+
+
+Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case
+still flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as
+death.  A spider's web!  Walking fast, and noting nothing in the
+moonlight, he brooded over the scene he had been through, over the
+memory of her figure rigid in his grasp.  And the more he brooded,
+the more certain he became that she had a lover--her words, 'I
+would sooner die!' were ridiculous if she had not.  Even if she had
+never loved him, she had made no fuss until Bosinney came on the
+scene.  No; she was in love again, or she would not have made that
+melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all the circumstances
+was reasonable!  Very well!  That simplified matters.
+
+'I'll take steps to know where I am,' he thought; 'I'll go to
+Polteed's the first thing tomorrow morning.'
+
+But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble
+with himself.  He had employed Polteed's agency several times in
+the routine of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie's
+case, but he had never thought it possible to employ them to watch
+his own wife.
+
+It was too insulting to himself!
+
+He slept over that project and his wounded pride--or rather, kept
+vigil.  Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she called
+herself by her maiden name of Heron.  Polteed would not know, at
+first at all events, whose wife she was, would not look at him
+obsequiously and leer behind his back.  She would just be the wife
+of one of his clients.  And that would be true--for was he not his
+own solicitor?
+
+He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at the
+first possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail himself.  And
+making Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee; he stole out of
+the house before the hour of breakfast.  He walked rapidly to one
+of those small West End streets where Polteed's and other firms
+ministered to the virtues of the wealthier classes.  Hitherto he
+had always had Polteed to see him in the Poultry; but he well knew
+their address, and reached it at the opening hour.  In the outer
+office, a room furnished so cosily that it might have been a
+money-lender's, he was attended by a lady who might have been a
+schoolmistress.
+
+"I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed.  He knows me--never mind my
+name."
+
+To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was reduced
+to having his wife spied on, was the overpowering consideration.
+
+Mr. Claud Polteed--so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed--was one of
+those men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown
+eyes, who might be taken for Jews but are really Phoenicians; he
+received Soames in a room hushed by thickness of carpet and
+curtains.  It was, in fact, confidentially furnished, without trace
+of document anywhere to be seen.
+
+Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door
+with a certain ostentation.
+
+"If a client sends for me," he was in the habit of saying, "he
+takes what precaution he likes.  If he comes here, we convince him
+that we have no leakages.  I may safely say we lead in security, if
+in nothing else...."  "Now, sir, what can I do for you?"
+
+Soames' gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak.  It was
+absolutely necessary to hide from this man that he had any but
+professional interest in the matter; and, mechanically, his face
+assumed its sideway smile.
+
+"I've come to you early like this because there's not an hour to
+lose"--if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet!  "Have you a
+really trustworthy woman free?"
+
+Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his eyes
+over it, and locked the drawer up again.
+
+"Yes," he said; "the very woman."
+
+Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs--nothing but a faint
+flush, which might have been his normal complexion, betrayed him.
+
+"Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat C,
+Truro Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Polteed; "divorce, I presume?" and he blew
+into a speaking-tube.  "Mrs. Blanch in?  I shall want to speak to
+her in ten minutes."
+
+"Deal with any reports yourself," resumed Soames, "and send them to
+me personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered.  My
+client exacts the utmost secrecy."
+
+Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, 'You are teaching your
+grandmother, my dear sir; and his eyes slid over Soames' face for
+one unprofessional instant.
+
+"Make his mind perfectly easy," he said.  "Do you smoke?"
+
+"No," said Soames.  "Understand me: Nothing may come of this.  If a
+name gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very
+serious consequences."
+
+Mr. Polteed nodded.  "I can put it into the cipher category.  Under
+that system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers."
+
+He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote
+on them, and handed one to Soames.
+
+"Keep that, sir; it's your key.  I retain this duplicate.  The case
+we'll call 7x.  The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the
+Mansions 25; yourself--I should say, your firm--31; my firm 32,
+myself 2.  In case you should have to mention your client in
+writing I have called him 43; any person we suspect will be 47;
+a second person 51.  Any special hint or instruction while we're
+about it?"
+
+"No," said Soames; "that is--every consideration compatible."
+
+Again Mr. Polteed nodded.  "Expense?"
+
+Soames shrugged.  "In reason," he answered curtly, and got up.
+"Keep it entirely in your own hands."
+
+"Entirely," said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and
+the door.  "I shall be seeing you in that other case before long.
+Good morning, sir."  His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames
+once more, and he unlocked the door.
+
+"Good morning," said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.
+
+Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself.  A spider's
+web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean
+method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life
+as his most sacred piece of property.  But the die was cast, he
+could not go back.  And he went on into the Poultry, and locked
+away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher destined to
+make crystal-clear his domestic bankruptcy.
+
+Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all
+the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of
+others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own;
+and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole
+unfeeling process of legal regulation.
+
+He worked hard all day.  Winifred was due at four o'clock; he was
+to take her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C.,
+and waiting for her he re-read the letter he  had caused her to
+write the day of Dartie's departure, requiring him to return.
+
+
+"DEAR MONTAGUE,
+
+"I have received your letter with the news that you have left me
+for ever and are on your way to Buenos Aires.  It has naturally
+been a great shock.  I am taking this earliest opportunity of
+writing to tell you that I am prepared to let bygones be bygones if
+you will return to me at once.  I beg you to do so.  I am very much
+upset, and will not say any more now.  I am sending this letter
+registered to the address you left at your Club.  Please cable to
+me.
+
+"Your still affectionate wife,
+
+"WINIFRED DARTIE."
+
+
+Ugh!  What bitter humbug!  He remembered leaning over Winifred
+while she copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said,
+laying down her pen, "Suppose he comes, Soames!"  in such a strange
+tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind.  "He won't
+come," he had answered, "till he's spent his money.  That's why we
+must act at once."  Annexed to the copy of that letter was the
+original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club.  Soames
+could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor.
+Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on.  He seemed to hear
+the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously!  Seriously enough
+to write him as you did?  Do you think he meant it?"  Never mind!
+The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not returned.
+Annexed also was his cabled answer: "Impossible return.  Dartie."
+Soames shook his head.  If the whole thing were not disposed of
+within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a
+bad penny.  It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him,
+besides all the worry to Winifred and his father.  'I must stiffen
+Dreamer's back,' he thought; 'we must push it on.'
+
+Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her
+fair hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James' barouche
+drawn by James' pair.  Soames had not seen it in the City since his
+father retired from business five years ago, and its incongruity
+gave him a shock.  'Times are changing,' he thought; 'one doesn't
+know what'll go next!'  Top hats even were scarcer.  He enquired
+after Val.  Val, said Winifred, wrote that he was going to play
+polo next term.  She thought he was in a very good set.  She added
+with fashionably disguised anxiety: "Will there be much publicity
+about my affair, Soames?  Must it be in the papers?  It's so bad
+for him, and the girls."
+
+With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:
+
+"The papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to keep things
+out.  They pretend to be guarding the public's morals, and they
+corrupt them with their beastly reports.  But we haven't got to
+that yet.  We're only seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution
+question.  Of course he understands that it's to lead to a divorce;
+but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie back--you might
+practice that attitude to-day."
+
+Winifred sighed.
+
+"Oh!  What a clown Monty's been!"   she said.
+
+Soames gave her a sharp look.  It was clear to him that she could
+not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing
+if given half a chance.  His own instinct had been firm in this
+matter from the first.  To save a little scandal now would only
+bring on his sister and her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin
+later on if Dartie were allowed to hang on to them, going down-hill
+and spending the money James would leave his daughter.  Though it
+was all tied up, that fellow would milk the settlements somehow,
+and make his family pay through the nose to keep him out of
+bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol!  They left the shining carriage,
+with the shining horses and the shining-hatted servants on the
+Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.'s Chambers in Crown
+Office Row.
+
+"Mr. Bellby is here, sir," said the clerk; "Mr. Dreamer will be ten
+minutes."
+
+Mr. Bellby, the junior--not as junior as he might have been, for
+Soames only employed barristers of established reputation; it was,
+indeed, something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed
+to establish that which made him employ them--Mr. Bellby was
+seated, taking a final glance through his papers.  He had come from
+Court, and was in wig and gown, which suited a nose jutting out
+like the handle of a tiny pump, his small shrewd blue eyes, and
+rather protruding lower lip--no better man to supplement and
+stiffen Dreamer.
+
+The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the weather
+and spoke of the war.  Soames interrupted suddenly:
+
+"If he doesn't comply we can't bring proceedings for six months.  I
+want to get on with the matter, Bellby."
+
+Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at
+Winifred and murmured: "The Law's delays, Mrs. Dartie."
+
+"Six months!" repeated Soames; "it'll drive it up to June!  We
+shan't get the suit on till after the long vacation.  We must put
+the screw on, Bellby"--he would have all his work cut out to keep
+Winifred up to the scratch.
+
+"Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir."
+
+They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting
+Winifred after an interval of one minute by his watch.
+
+Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before
+the fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he
+had the leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great
+learning, a considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and
+little greyish whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking of
+one eye, and the concealment of his lower with his upper lip, which
+gave a smothered turn to his speech.  He had a way, too, of coming
+suddenly round the corner on the person he was talking to; this,
+with a disconcerting tone of voice, and a habit of growling before
+he began to speak--had secured a reputation second in Probate and
+Divorce to very few.  Having listened, eye cocked, to Mr. Bellby's
+breezy recapitulation of the facts, he growled, and said:
+
+"I know all that;" and coming round the corner at Winifred,
+smothered the words:
+
+"We want to get him back, don't we, Mrs. Dartie?"
+
+Soames interposed sharply:
+
+"My sister's position, of course, is intolerable."
+
+Dreamer growled.  "Exactly.  Now, can we rely on the cabled
+refusal, or must we wait till after Christmas to give him a chance
+to have written--that's the point, isn't it?"
+
+"The sooner...."  Soames began.
+
+"What do you say, Bellby?" said Dreamer, coming round his corner.
+
+Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.
+
+"We won't be on till the middle of December.  We've no need to give
+um more rope than that."
+
+"No," said Soames, "why should my sister be incommoded by his
+choosing to go"
+
+"To Jericho!" said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; "quite
+so.  People oughtn't to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?"
+And he raised his gown into a sort of fantail.  "I agree.  We can
+go forward.  Is there anything more?"
+
+"Nothing at present," said Soames meaningly; "I wanted you to see
+my sister."
+
+Dreamer growled softly: "Delighted.  Good evening!"  And let fall
+the protection of his gown.
+
+They filed out.  Winifred went down the stairs.  Soames lingered.
+In spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.
+
+"The evidence is all right, I think," he said to Bellby.  "Between
+ourselves, if we don't get the thing through quick, we never may.
+D'you think be understands that?"
+
+"I'll make um," said Bellby.  "Good man though--good man."
+
+Soames nodded and hastened after his sister.  He found her in a
+draught, biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:
+
+"The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete."
+
+Winifred's face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to
+the carriage.  And, all through that silent drive back to Green
+Street, the souls of both of them revolved a single thought: 'Why,
+oh! why should I have to expose my misfortune to the public like
+this?  Why have to employ spies to peer into my private troubles?
+They were not of my making.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT
+
+
+The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was
+animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of
+what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the
+British body politic.  Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning
+a war which must affect property, had been heard to say that these
+Boers were a pig-headed lot; they were causing a lot of expense,
+and the sooner they had their lesson the better.  He would send out
+Wolseley!  Seeing always a little further than other people--whence
+the most considerable fortune of all the Forsytes--he had perceived
+already that Buller was not the man--'a bull of a chap, who just
+went butting, and if they didn't look out Ladysmith would fall.'
+This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he was
+enabled to say to everybody: 'I told you so.'  During that week of
+gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas
+attended so many drills in his corps, 'The Devil's Own,' that young
+Nicholas consulted the family physician about his son's health and
+was alarmed to find that he was perfectly sound.  The boy had only
+just eaten his dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense,
+and it was in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he
+should be playing with military efficiency at a time when military
+efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be wanted.
+His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly
+educated in the feeling that no British war could be other than
+little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of Imperial
+commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for he owned De
+Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient sacrifice on the
+part of his grandson.
+
+At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed.  The
+inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two
+months of the term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising
+out into vivid oppositions.  Normal adolescence, ever in England of
+a conservative tendency though not taking things too seriously, was
+vehement for a fight to a finish and a good licking for the Boers.
+Of this larger faction Val Dartie was naturally a member.  Radical
+youth, on the other hand, a small but perhaps more vocal body, was
+for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy.  Until Black
+Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and
+argument remained but academic.  Jolly was one of those who knew
+not where he stood.  A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon's love
+of justice prevented, him from seeing one side only.  Moreover, in
+his set of 'the best' there was a 'jumping-Jesus' of extremely
+advanced opinions and some personal magnetism.  Jolly wavered.  His
+father, too, seemed doubtful in his views.  And though, as was
+proper at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father,
+watchful for defects which might still be remedied, still that
+father had an 'air' which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of
+ironic tolerance.  Artists of course; were notoriously Hamlet-like,
+and to this extent one must discount for one's father, even if one
+loved him.  But Jolyon's original view, that to 'put your nose in
+where you aren't wanted' (as the Uitlanders had done) 'and then
+work the oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean
+potato,' had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction
+for his son, who thought a deal about gentility.  On the other hand
+Jolly could not abide such as his set called 'cranks,' and Val's
+set called 'smugs,' so that he was still balancing when the clock
+of Black Week struck.  One--two--three, came those ominous repulses
+at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso.  The sturdy English soul
+reacting after the first cried, 'Ah! but Methuen!' after the
+second: 'Ah! but Buller!' then, in inspissated gloom, hardened.
+And Jolly said to himself: 'No, damn it!  We've got to lick the
+beggars now; I don't care whether we're right or wrong.'  And, if
+he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought.
+
+That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with
+'one of the best.'  After the second toast, 'Buller and damnation
+to the Boers,' drunk--no heel taps--in the college Burgundy, he
+noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a
+grin and saying something to his neighbour.  He was sure it was
+disparaging.  The last boy in the world to make himself conspicuous
+or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red and shut his
+lips.  The queer hostility he had always felt towards his second-
+cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced.  'All right!'  he
+thought, 'you wait, my friend!'  More wine than was good for him,
+as the custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped
+forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.
+
+"What did you say about me in there?"
+
+"Mayn't I say what I like?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I said you were a pro-Boer--and so you are!"
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+"D'you want a row?"
+
+"Of course, but not here; in the garden."
+
+"All right.  Come on."
+
+They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching;
+they climbed the garden railings.  The spikes on the top slightly
+ripped Val's sleeve, and occupied his mind.  Jolly's mind was
+occupied by the thought that they were going to fight in the
+precincts of a college foreign to them both.  It was not the thing,
+but never mind--the young beast!
+
+They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took off
+their coats.
+
+"You're not screwed, are you?" said Jolly suddenly.  "I can't fight
+you if you're screwed."
+
+"No more than you."
+
+"All right then."
+
+Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of
+defence.  They had drunk too much for science, and so were
+especially careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote
+Val almost accidentally on the nose.  After that it was all a dark
+and ugly scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one
+to call 'time,' till, battered and blown, they unclinched and
+staggered back from each other, as a voice said:
+
+"Your names, young gentlemen?"
+
+At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate,
+like some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up
+their coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made
+for the secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight.  Here,
+in dim light, they mopped their faces, and without a word walked,
+ten paces apart, to the college gate.  They went out silently, Val
+going towards the Broad along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane
+towards the High.  His head, still fumed, was busy with regret that
+he had not displayed more science, passing in review the counters
+and knockout blows which he had not delivered.  His mind strayed on
+to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike that which he had just
+been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and sword, with thrust
+and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved Dumas.  He
+fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and D'Artagnan
+rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as Coconnas,
+Brissac, or Rochefort.  The fellow was just a confounded cousin who
+didn't come up to Cocker.  Never mind!  He had given him one or
+two.  'Pro-Boer!'  The word still rankled, and thoughts of en-
+listing jostled his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing
+gallantly, while the Boers rolled over like rabbits.  And, turning
+up his smarting eyes, he saw the stars shining between the house-
+tops of the High, and himself lying out on the Karoo (whatever that
+was) rolled in a blanket, with his rifle ready and his gaze fixed
+on a glittering heaven.
+
+He had a fearful 'head' next morning, which he doctored, as became
+one of 'the best,' by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong
+coffee which he could not drink, and only sipping a little Hock at
+lunch.  The legend that 'some fool' had run into him round a corner
+accounted for a bruise on his cheek.  He would on no account have
+mentioned the fight, for; on second thoughts, it fell far short of
+his standards.
+
+The next day he went 'down,' and travelled through to Robin Hill.
+Nobody was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to
+Paris.  He spent a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of
+touch with either of his sisters.  June, indeed, was occupied with
+lame ducks, whom, as a rule, Jolly could not stand, especially that
+Eric Cobbley and his family, 'hopeless outsiders,' who were always
+littering up the house in the Vacation.  And between Holly and
+himself there was a strange division, as if she were beginning to
+have opinions of her own, which was so--unnecessary.  He punched
+viciously at a ball, rode furiously but alone in Richmond Park,
+making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles put up to close
+certain worn avenues of grass--keeping his nerve in, he called it.
+Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are.  He
+bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting
+across the pond into the kitchen--garden wall, to the peril of
+gardeners, with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist
+and save South Africa for his country.  In fact, now that they were
+appealing for Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset.
+Ought he to go?  None of 'the best,' so far as he knew--and he was
+in correspondence with several--were thinking of joining.  If they
+had been making a move he would have gone at once--very compet-
+itive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be
+left behind in anything--but to do it off his own bat might look
+like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary.
+Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young
+Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked.  It was altogether
+mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became
+quite unlike his serene and rather lordly self.
+
+And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath--two
+riders, in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she
+on the left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and
+he on the right-hand as assuredly that 'squirt' Val Dartie.  His
+first impulse was to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning
+of this portent, tell the fellow to 'bunk,' and take Holly home.
+His second-to feel that he would look a fool if they refused.  He
+reined his horse in behind a tree, then perceived that it was
+equally impossible to spy on them.  Nothing for it but to go home
+and await her coming!  Sneaking out with that young bounder!  He
+could not consult with June, because she had gone up that morning
+in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot.  And his father was still
+in 'that rotten Paris.'  He felt that this was emphatically one of
+those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at
+school, where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to
+newspapers and placed them in the centre of their studies to
+accustom them to coolness in moments of danger.  He did not feel at
+all cool waiting in the stable-yard, idly stroking the dog
+Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat monk, and sad in the absence of
+his master, turned up his face, panting with gratitude for this
+attention.  It was half an hour before Holly came, flushed and ever
+so much prettier than she had any right to look.  He saw her look
+at him quickly--guiltily of course--then followed her in, and,
+taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their grand-
+father's study.  The room, not much used now, was still vaguely
+haunted for them both by a presence with which they associated
+tenderness, large drooping white moustaches, the scent of cigar
+smoke, and laughter.  Here Jolly, in the prime of his youth, before
+he went to school at all, had been wont to wrestle with his grand-
+father, who even at eighty had an irresistible habit of crooking
+his leg.  Here Holly, perched on the arm of the great leather
+chair, had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which she
+would whisper secrets.  Through that window they had all three
+sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn, and a
+mysterious game called 'Wopsy-doozle,' not to be understood by
+outsiders, which made old Jolyon very hot.  Here once on a warm
+night Holly had appeared in her 'nighty,' having had a bad dream,
+to have the clutch of it released.  And here Jolly, having begun
+the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle
+Beauce's new-laid egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent down (in
+the absence of his father) to the ensuing dialogue:
+
+"Now, my boy, you mustn't go on like this."
+
+"Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she
+boxed mine again."
+
+"Strike a lady?  That'll never do!  Have you begged her pardon?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Then you must go and do it at once.  Come along."
+
+"But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one."
+
+"My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do."
+
+"Well, she lost her temper; and I didn't lose mine."
+
+"Come along."
+
+"You come too, then, Gran."
+
+"Well--this time only."
+
+And they had gone hand in hand.
+
+Here--where the Waverley novels and Byron's works and Gibbon's
+Roman Empire and Humboldt's Cosmos, and the bronzes on the
+mantelpiece, and that masterpiece of the oily school, 'Dutch
+Fishing-Boats at Sunset,' were fixed as fate, and for all sign of
+change old Jolyon might have been sitting there still, with legs
+crossed, in the arm chair, and domed forehead and deep eyes grave
+above The Times--here they came, those two grandchildren.  And
+Jolly said:
+
+"I saw you and that fellow in the Park."
+
+The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some
+satisfaction; she ought to be ashamed!
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.
+
+"Do you know," he said weightily, "that he called me a pro-Boer
+last term?  And I had to fight him."
+
+"Who won?"
+
+Jolly wished to answer: 'I should have,' but it seemed beneath him.
+
+"Look here!" he said, "what's the meaning of it?  Without telling
+anybody!"
+
+"Why should I?  Dad isn't here; why shouldn't I ride with him?"
+
+"You've got me to ride with.  I think he's an awful young rotter."
+
+Holly went pale with anger.
+
+"He isn't.  It's your own fault for not liking him."
+
+And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at
+the bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded
+from him so far by his sister's dark head under her soft felt
+riding hat.  He felt queerly disturbed, shaken to his young
+foundations.  A lifelong domination lay shattered round his feet.
+He went up to the Venus and mechanically inspected the tortoise.
+
+Why didn't he like Val Dartie?  He could not tell.  Ignorant of
+family history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started
+thirteen years before with Bosinney's defection from June in favour
+of Soames' wife, knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at
+sea.  He just did dislike him.  The question, however, was: What
+should he do?  Val Dartie, it was true, was a second-cousin, but it
+was not the thing for Holly to go about with him.  And yet to
+'tell' of what he had chanced on was against his creed.  In this
+dilemma he went and sat in the old leather chair and crossed his
+legs.  It grew dark while he sat there staring out through the long
+window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves, becoming
+slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.
+
+'Grandfather!' he thought without sequence, and took out his watch.
+He could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going.  'Five
+o'clock!'  His grandfather's first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth
+with age--all the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of
+many a fall.  The chime was like a little voice from out of that
+golden age, when they first came from St.  John's Wood, London, to
+this house--came driving with grandfather in his carriage, and
+almost instantly took to the trees.  Trees to climb, and grand-
+father watering the geranium-beds below!  What was to be done?
+Tell Dad he must come home?  Confide in June?--only she was so--so
+sudden!  Do nothing and trust to luck?  After all, the Vac.  would
+soon be over.  Go up and see Val and warn him off?  But how get his
+address?  Holly wouldn't give it him!  A maze of paths, a cloud of
+possibilities!  He lit a cigarette.  When he had smoked it halfway
+through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been
+passed gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper:
+'Do nothing; be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!'  And Jolly
+heaved a sigh of contentment, blowing smoke through his,
+nostrils....
+
+But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still
+frowning.  'He is not--he is not!'  were the words which kept
+forming on her lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JOLYON IN TWO MINDS
+
+
+A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare
+St. Lazare was Jolyon's haunt in Paris.  He hated his fellow
+Forsytes abroad--vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden
+runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge.  Their air of
+having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as
+possible annoyed him.  But no other Forsyte came near this haunt,
+where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was excel-
+lent.  Paris was always to him more attractive in winter.  The
+acrid savour from woodsmoke and chestnut-roasting braziers, the
+sharpness of the wintry sunshine on bright rays, the open cafes
+defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained brisk boulevard
+crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a soul
+which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.
+
+He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where
+pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed.  He felt
+philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a
+subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a
+darkness shot with shifting gleams of light.
+
+When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he
+was far from admitting that Irene's presence was influencing him.
+He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to see
+her had been more than half the reason.  In England one did not
+admit what was natural.  He had thought it might be well to speak
+to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but in
+Paris he at once knew better.  There was a glamour over the city.
+On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer which
+procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:
+
+
+"MY DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"It will be a happiness for me to see you.
+
+" IRENE."
+
+
+He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as
+he had often had going to visit an adored picture.  No woman, so
+far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sen-
+suous and yet impersonal sensation.  He was going to sit and feast
+his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to go and
+feast his eyes again to-morrow.  Such was his feeling, when in the
+tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near the river
+she came to him preceded by a small page-boy who uttered the word,
+"Madame," and vanished.  Her face, her smile, the poise of her
+figure, were just as he had pictured, and the expression of her
+face said plainly: 'A friend!'
+
+"Well," he said, "what news, poor exile?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Nothing from Soames?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you
+some money.  How do you like Paris?"
+
+While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he
+had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving
+just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least
+conceivable dimple.  It was like discovering a woman in what had
+hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost
+impersonally admired.  She owned that to be alone in Paris was a
+little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that
+it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert.  Besides,
+the English were not liked just now!
+
+"That will hardly be your case," said Jolyon; "you should appeal to
+the French."
+
+"It has its disadvantages."
+
+Jolyon nodded.
+
+"Well, you must let me take you about while I'm here.  We'll start
+to-morrow.  Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we'll go to the
+Opera-Comique."
+
+It was the beginning of daily meetings.
+
+Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of
+the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which
+to be friendly with a pretty woman.  Revelation was alighting like
+a bird in his heart, singing: 'Elle est ton reve!  Elle est ton
+reve!  Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous--a bad
+case of elderly rapture.  Having once been ostracised by Society,
+he had never since had any real regard for conventional morality;
+but the idea of a love which she could never return--and how could
+she at his age?--hardly mounted beyond his subconscious mind.  He
+was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and loneliness of her
+life.  Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the pleasure she
+clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably desirous
+of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure.  It was like
+watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink--in his
+companionship.  So far as they could tell, no one knew her address
+except himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known,
+so that discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits
+to concerts, picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners,
+expeditions to Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau.  And time
+fled--one of those full months without past to it or future.  What
+in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now
+perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective
+companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry-
+-arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there, smiling
+and happy in their friendship, and always to him more beautiful and
+spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life seemed to march
+in admirable step with his own, conditioned by emotion more than by
+reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to beauty, almost
+passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to instinctive
+rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable.  And during
+all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with
+which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work
+of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire.  The future--inexorable
+pendant to the present he took care not to face, for fear of
+breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this
+time in places still more delightful, where the sun was hot and
+there were strange things to see and paint.  The end came swiftly
+on the 20th of January with a telegram:
+
+
+"Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry.
+JOLLY."
+
+
+Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the
+Louvre.  It brought him up with a round turn.  While he was lotus-
+eating here, his boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought to be,
+had taken this great step towards danger, hardship, perhaps even
+death.  He felt disturbed to the soul, realising suddenly how Irene
+had twined herself round the roots of his being.  Thus threatened
+with severance, the tie between them--for it had become a kind of
+tie--no longer had impersonal quality.  The tranquil enjoyment of
+things in common, Jolyon perceived, was gone for ever.  He saw his
+feeling as it was, in the nature of an infatuation.  Ridiculous,
+perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose itself.
+And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any such
+disclosure.  The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way.  He was
+proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight
+for the country; for on Jolyon's pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had
+left its mark.  And so the end was reached before the beginning!
+Well, luckily he had never made a sign!
+
+When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the 'Virgin
+of the Rocks,' graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious.  'Have
+I to give up seeing that?' he thought.  'It's unnatural, so long as
+she's willing that I should see her.'  He stood, unnoticed,
+watching her, storing up the image of her figure, envying the
+picture on which she was bending that long scrutiny.  Twice she
+turned her head towards the entrance, and he thought: 'That's for
+me!'  At last he went forward.
+
+"Look!" he said.
+
+She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.
+
+That sigh, too, was for him!  His position was really cruel!  To be
+loyal to his son he must just shake her hand and go.  To be loyal
+to the feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that
+feeling was.  Could she, would she understand the silence in which
+he was gazing at that picture?
+
+"I'm afraid I must go home at once," he said at last.  "I shall
+miss all this awfully."
+
+"So shall I; but, of course, you must go."
+
+"Well!" said Jolyon holding out his hand.
+
+Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.
+
+"Such is life!" he said.  "Take care of yourself, my dear!"
+
+He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his brain
+refused to steer him away from her.  From the doorway, he saw her
+lift her hand and touch its fingers with her lips.  He raised his
+hat solemnly, and did not look back again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+DARTIE VERSUS DARTIE
+
+
+The suit--Dartie versus Dartie--for restitution of those conjugal
+rights concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided,
+followed the laws of subtraction towards day of judgment.  This was
+not reached before the Courts rose for Christmas, but the case was
+third on the list when they sat again.  Winifred spent the
+Christmas holidays a thought more fashionably than usual, with the
+matter locked up in her low-cut bosom.  James was particularly
+liberal to her that Christmas, expressing thereby his sympathy, and
+relief, at the approaching dissolution of her marriage with that
+'precious rascal,' which his old heart felt but his old lips could
+not utter.
+
+The disappearance of Dartie made the fall in Consols a
+comparatively small matter; and as to the scandal--the real animus
+he felt against that fellow, and the increasing lead which property
+was attaining over reputation in a true Forsyte about to leave this
+world, served to drug a mind from which all allusions to the matter
+(except his own) were studiously kept.  What worried him as a
+lawyer and a parent was the fear that Dartie might suddenly turn up
+and obey the Order of the Court when made.  That would be a pretty
+how-de-do!  The fear preyed on him in fact so much that, in
+presenting Winifred with a large Christmas cheque, he said: "It's
+chiefly for that chap out there; to keep him from coming back."  It
+was, of course, to pitch away good money, but all in the nature of
+insurance against that bankruptcy which would no longer hang over
+him if only the divorce went through; and he questioned Winifred
+rigorously until she could assure him that the money had been sent.
+Poor woman!--it cost her many a pang to send what must find its way
+into the vanity-bag of 'that creature!'  Soames, hearing of it,
+shook his head.  They were not dealing with a Forsyte, reasonably
+tenacious of his purpose.  It was very risky without knowing how
+the land lay out there.  Still, it would look well with the Court;
+and he would see that Dreamer brought it out.  "I wonder," he said
+suddenly, "where that ballet goes after the Argentine"; never
+omitting a chance of reminder; for he knew that Winifred still had
+a weakness, if not for Dartie, at least for not laundering him in
+public.  Though not good at showing admiration, he admitted that
+she was behaving extremely well, with all her children at home
+gaping like young birds for news of their father--Imogen just on
+the point of coming out, and Val very restive about the whole
+thing.  He felt that Val was the real heart of the matter to
+Winifred, who certainly loved him beyond her other children.  The
+boy could spoke the wheel of this divorce yet if he set his mind to
+it.  And Soames was very careful to keep the proximity of the
+preliminary proceedings from his nephew's ears.  He did more.  He
+asked him to dine at the Remove, and over Val's cigar introduced
+the subject which he knew to be nearest to his heart.
+
+"I hear," he said, "that you want to play polo up at Oxford."
+
+Val became less recumbent in his chair.
+
+"Rather!" he said.
+
+"Well," continued Soames, "that's a very expensive business.  Your
+grandfather isn't likely to consent to it unless he can make sure
+that he's not got any other drain on him."  And he paused to see
+whether the boy understood his meaning.
+
+Val's thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace
+appeared on his wide mouth, and he muttered:
+
+"I suppose you mean my Dad!"
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "I'm afraid it depends on whether he continues
+to be a drag or not;" and said no more, letting the boy dream it
+over.
+
+But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey
+and a girl riding it.  Though Crum was in town and an introduction
+to Cynthia Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask; indeed,
+he shunned Crum and lived a life strange even to himself, except in
+so far as accounts with tailor and livery stable were concerned.
+To his mother, his sisters, his young brother, he seemed to spend
+this Vacation in 'seeing fellows,' and his evenings sleepily at
+home.  They could not propose anything in daylight that did not
+meet with the one response: "Sorry; I've got to see a fellow"; and
+he was put to extraordinary shifts to get in and out of the house
+unobserved in riding clothes; until, being made a member of the
+Goat's Club, he was able to transport them there, where he could
+change unregarded and slip off on his hack to Richmond Park.  He
+kept his growing sentiment religiously to himself.  Not for a world
+would he breathe to the 'fellows,' whom he was not 'seeing,'
+anything so ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and
+his.  But he could not help its destroying his other appetites.  It
+was coming between him and the legitimate pleasures of youth at
+last on its own in a way which must, he knew, make him a milksop in
+the eyes of Crum.  All he cared for was to dress in his last-
+created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin Hill Gate, where
+presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling with its slim
+and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves they would
+go off side by side, not talking very much, riding races sometimes,
+and sometimes holding hands.  More than once of an evening, in a
+moment of expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how
+this shy sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his
+'life.'  But bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five
+were spoil-sports, prevented him.  After all, he supposed he would
+have to go through with College, and she would have to 'come out,'
+before they could be married; so why complicate things, so long as
+he could see her?  Sisters were teasing and unsympathetic beings, a
+brother worse, so there was no one to, confide in.  Ah!  And this
+beastly divorce business!  What a misfortune to have a name which
+other people hadn't!  If only he had been called Gordon or Scott or
+Howard or something fairly common!  But Dartie--there wasn't
+another in the directory!  One might as well have been named Morkin
+for all the covert it afforded!  So matters went on, till one day
+in the middle of January the silver-roan palfrey and its rider were
+missing at the tryst.  Lingering in the cold, he debated whether he
+should ride on to the house: But Jolly might be there, and the
+memory of their dark encounter was still fresh within him.  One
+could not be always fighting with her brother!  So he returned
+dismally to town and spent an evening plunged in gloom.  At
+breakfast next day he noticed that his mother had on an unfamiliar
+dress and was wearing her hat.  The dress was black with a glimpse
+of peacock blue, the hat black and large--she looked exceptionally
+well.  But when after breakfast she said to him, "Come in here,
+Val," and led the way to the drawing-room, he was at once beset by
+qualms.  Winifred carefully shut the door and passed her
+handkerchief over her lips; inhaling the violette de Parme with
+which it had been soaked, Val thought: 'Has she found out about
+Holly?'
+
+Her voice interrupted
+
+"Are you going to be nice to me, dear boy?" Val grinned doubtfully.
+
+"Will you come with me this morning...."
+
+"I've got to see...."  began Val, but something in her face stopped
+him.  "I say," he said, "you don't mean ...."
+
+"Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning."  Already!--that
+d---d business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since
+nobody ever mentioned it.  In self-commiseration he stood picking
+little bits of skin off his fingers.  Then noticing that his
+mother's lips were all awry, he said impulsively: "All right,
+mother; I'll come.  The brutes!"   What brutes he did not know, but
+the expression exactly summed up their joint feeling, and restored
+a measure of equanimity.
+
+"I suppose I'd better change into a 'shooter,"' he muttered,
+escaping to his room.  He put on the 'shooter,' a higher collar, a
+pearl pin, and his neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous
+accompaniment.  Looking at himself in the glass, he said, "Well,
+I'm damned if I'm going to show anything!" and went down.  He found
+his grandfather's carriage at the door, and his mother in furs,
+with the appearance of one going to a Mansion House Assembly.  They
+seated themselves side by side in the closed barouche, and all the
+way to the Courts of Justice Val made but one allusion to the
+business in hand.  "There'll be nothing about those pearls, will
+there?"
+
+The little tufted white tails of Winifred's muff began to shiver.
+
+"Oh, no," she said, "it'll be quite harmless to-day.  Your
+grandmother wanted to come too, but I wouldn't let her.  I thought
+you could take care of me.  You look so nice, Val.  Just pull your
+coat collar up a little more at the back--that's right."
+
+"If they bully you...."  began Val.
+
+"Oh! they won't.  I shall be very cool.  It's the only way."
+
+"They won't want me to give evidence or anything?"
+
+"No, dear; it's all arranged."  And she patted his hand.  The
+determined front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in Val's
+chest, and he busied himself in drawing his gloves off and on.  He
+had taken what he now saw was the wrong pair to go with his spats;
+they should have been grey, but were deerskin of a dark tan;
+whether to keep them on or not he could not decide.  They arrived
+soon after ten.  It was his first visit to the Law Courts, and the
+building struck him at once.
+
+"By Jove!" he said as they passed into the hall, "this'd make four
+or five jolly good racket courts."
+
+Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs.
+
+"Here you are!" he said, without shaking hands, as if the event had
+made them too familiar for such formalities.  "It's Happerly
+Browne, Court I.  We shall be on first."
+
+A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing
+now in the top of Val's chest, but he followed his mother and uncle
+doggedly, looking at no more than he could help, and thinking that
+the place smelled 'fuggy.'  People seemed to be lurking everywhere,
+and he plucked Soames by the sleeve.
+
+"I say, Uncle, you're not going to let those beastly papers in, are
+you?"
+
+Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to silence
+in its time.
+
+"In here," he said.  "You needn't take off your furs, Winifred."
+
+Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up.  In this
+confounded hole everybody and there were a good many of them--
+seemed sitting on everybody else's knee, though really divided from
+each other by pews; and Val had a feeling that they might all slip
+down together into the well.  This, however, was but a momentary
+vision--of mahogany, and black gowns, and white blobs of wigs and
+faces and papers, all rather secret and whispery--before he was
+sitting next his mother in the front row, with his back to it all,
+glad of her violette de Parme, and taking off his gloves for the
+last time.  His mother was looking at him; he was suddenly
+conscious that she had really wanted him there next to her, and
+that he counted for something in this business.
+
+All right!  He would show them!  Squaring his shoulders, he crossed
+his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats.  But just then an 'old
+Johnny' in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny
+raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite, and
+he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand up with everybody
+else.
+
+'Dartie versus Dartie!'
+
+It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one's name called
+out like this in public!  And, suddenly conscious that someone
+nearly behind him had begun talking about his family, he screwed
+his face round to see an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he
+were eating his own words--queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man
+he had seen once or twice dining at Park Lane and punishing the
+port; he knew now where they 'dug them up.'  All the same he found
+the old buffer quite fascinating, and would have continued to stare
+if his mother had not touched his arm.  Reduced to gazing before
+him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge's face instead.  Why should
+that old 'sportsman' with his sarcastic mouth and his quick-moving
+eyes have the power to meddle with their private affairs--hadn't he
+affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as nasty?  And
+there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated
+individualism of his breed.  The voice behind him droned along:
+"Differences about money matters--extravagance of the respondent"
+(What a word!  Was that his father?) "strained situation--frequent
+absences on the part of Mr. Dartie.  My client, very rightly, your
+Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course--but lead to
+ruin--remonstrated--gambling at cards and on the racecourse--"
+('That's right!' thought Val, 'pile it on!') "Crisis early in
+October, when the respondent wrote her this letter from his Club."
+Val sat up and his ears burned.  "I propose to read it with the
+emendations necessary to the epistle of a gentleman who has been--
+shall we say dining, me Lud?"
+
+'Old brute!' thought Val, flushing deeper; 'you're not paid to make
+jokes!'
+
+"'You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house.
+I am leaving the country to-morrow.  It's played out'--an
+expression, your Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who
+have not met with conspicuous success."
+
+'Sniggering owls!' thought Val, and his flush deepened.
+
+"'I am tired of being insulted by you.'  My client will tell your
+Ludship that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him
+'the limit' a very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all
+the circumstances."
+
+Val glanced sideways at his mother's impassive face, it had a
+hunted look in the eyes.  'Poor mother,' he thought, and touched
+her arm with his own.  The voice behind droned on.
+
+"'I am going to live a new life.  M.  D.'"
+
+"And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship
+Tuscarora for Buenos Aires.  Since then we have nothing from him
+but a cabled refusal in answer to the letter which my client wrote
+the following day in great distress, begging him to return to her.
+With your Ludship's permission.  I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the
+box."
+
+When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and
+say: 'Look here!  I'm going to see you jolly well treat her
+decently.'  He subdued it, however; heard her saying, 'the truth,
+the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' and looked up.  She
+made a rich figure of it, in her furs and large hat, with a slight
+flush on her cheek-bones, calm, matter-of-fact; and he felt proud
+of her thus confronting all these 'confounded lawyers.'  The
+examination began.  Knowing that this was only the preliminary to
+divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the questions framed so
+as to give the impression that she really wanted his father back.
+It seemed to him that they were 'foxing Old Bagwigs finely.'
+
+And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly:
+
+"Now, why did your husband leave you--not because you called him
+'the limit,' you know?"
+
+Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving
+his face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told
+him that the issue was in peril.  Had Uncle Soames and the old
+buffer behind made a mess of it?  His mother was speaking with a
+slight drawl.
+
+"No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time."
+
+"What had gone on?"
+
+"Our differences about money."
+
+"But you supplied the money.  Do you suggest that he left you to
+better his position?"
+
+'The brute!  The old brute, and nothing but the brute!'  thought
+Val suddenly.  'He smells a rat he's trying to get at the pastry!'
+And his heart stood still.  If--if he did, then, of course, he
+would know that his mother didn't really want his father back.  His
+mother spoke again, a thought more fashionably.
+
+"No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money.
+It took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last--and
+when he did...."
+
+"I see, you had refused.  But you've sent him some since."
+
+"My Lord, I wanted him back."
+
+"And you thought that would bring him?"
+
+"I don't know, my Lord, I acted on my father's advice."
+
+Something in the Judge's face, in the sound of the papers behind
+him, in the sudden crossing of his uncle's legs, told Val that she
+had made just the right answer.  'Crafty!'  he thought; 'by Jove,
+what humbug it all is!'
+
+The Judge was speaking:
+
+"Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie.  Are you still fond of your
+husband?"
+
+Val's hands, slack behind him, became fists.  What business had
+that Judge to make things human suddenly?  To make his mother speak
+out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn't know herself,
+before all these people!  It wasn't decent.  His mother answered,
+rather low: "Yes, my Lord."  Val saw the Judge nod.  'Wish I could
+take a cock-shy at your head!' he thought irreverently, as his
+mother came back to her seat beside him.  Witnesses to his father's
+departure and continued absence followed--one of their own maids
+even, which struck Val as particularly beastly; there was more
+talking, all humbug; and then the Judge pronounced the decree for
+restitution, and they got up to go.  Val walked out behind his
+mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level best to
+despise everybody.  His mother's voice in the corridor roused him
+from an angry trance.
+
+"You behaved beautifully, dear.  It was such a comfort to have you.
+Your uncle and I are going to lunch."
+
+"All right," said Val; "I shall have time to go and see that
+fellow."  And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs
+and out into the air.  He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the
+Goat's Club.  His thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before
+her brother showed her this thing in to-morrow's paper.
+
+When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the
+Cheshire Cheese.  He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr.
+Bellby.  At that early hour of noon they would have it to
+themselves, and Winifred had thought it would be 'amusing' to see
+this far-famed hostelry.  Having ordered a light repast, to the
+consternation of the waiter, they awaited its arrival together with
+that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after the hour and a half's
+suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity.  Mr. Bellby entered
+presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were glum.
+Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was the
+matter with that!
+
+"Quite," said Soames in a suitably low voice, "but we shall have to
+begin again to get evidence.  He'll probably try the divorce--it
+will look fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from the
+start.  His questions showed well enough that he doesn't like this
+restitution dodge."
+
+"Pho!" said Mr. Bellby cheerily, "he'll forget!  Why, man, he'll
+have tried a hundred cases between now and then.  Besides, he's
+bound by precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is
+satisfactory.  We won't let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge
+of the facts.  Dreamer did it very nicely--he's got a fatherly
+touch about um!"
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie," went on Mr. Bellby; "ye've a
+natural gift for giving evidence.  Steady as a rock."
+
+Here the, waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and
+the remark: "I 'urried up the pudden, sir.  You'll find plenty o'
+lark in it to-day."
+
+Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose.  But
+Soames and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of
+graviffred brown masses, touching them gingerly with their forks in
+the hope of distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little song-
+givers.  Having begun, however, they found they were hungrier than
+they thought, and finished the lot, with a glass of port apiece.
+Conversation turned on the war.  Soames thought Ladysmith would
+fall, and it might last a year.  Bellby thought it would be over by
+the summer.  Both agreed that they wanted more men.  There was
+nothing for it but complete victory, since it was now a question of
+prestige.  Winifred brought things back to more solid ground by
+saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come on till after
+the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the boys would have
+forgotten about it before Val had to go up again; the London season
+too would be over.  The lawyers reassured her, an interval of six
+months was necessary--after that the earlier the better.  People
+were now beginning to come in, and they parted--Soames to the city,
+Bellby to his chambers, Winifred in a hansom to Park Lane to let
+her mother know how she had fared.  The issue had been so
+satisfactory on the whole that it was considered advisable to tell
+James, who never failed to say day after day that he didn't know
+about Winifred's affair, he couldn't tell.  As his sands ran out;
+the importance of mundane matters became increasingly grave to him,
+as if he were feeling: 'I must make the most of it, and worry well;
+I shall soon have nothing to worry about.'
+
+He received the report grudgingly.  It was a new-fangled way of
+going about things, and he didn't know!  But he gave Winifred a
+cheque, saying:
+
+"I expect you'll have a lot of expense.  That's a new hat you've
+got on.  Why doesn't Val come and see us?"
+
+Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon.  And, going home,
+she sought her bedroom where she could be alone.  Now that her
+husband had been ordered back into her custody with a view to
+putting him away from her for ever, she would try once more to find
+out from her sore and lonely heart what she really wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CHALLENGE
+
+
+The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out
+while Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would
+canter on to the usual tryst.  His spirits were rising rapidly.
+There had been nothing so very terrible in the morning's
+proceedings beyond the general disgrace of violated privacy.  'If
+we were engaged!'  he thought, 'what happens wouldn't matter.'  He
+felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and clamours at the
+results of matrimony, and hastens to get married.  And he galloped
+over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be late.
+But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second
+defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully.  He could not
+go back without seeing her to-day!  Emerging from the Park, he
+proceeded towards Robin Hill.  He could not make up his mind for
+whom to ask.  Suppose her father were back, or her sister or
+brother were in!  He decided to gamble, and ask for them all first,
+so that if he were in luck and they were not there, it would be
+quite natural in the end to ask for Holly; while if any of them
+were in--an 'excuse for a ride' must be his saving grace.
+
+"Only Miss Holly is in, sir."
+
+"Oh!  thanks.  Might I take my horse round to the stables?  And
+would you say--her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie."
+
+When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy.  She
+led him to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat.
+
+"I've been awfully anxious," said Val in a low voice.  "What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Jolly knows about our riding."
+
+"Is he in?"
+
+"No; but I expect he will be soon."
+
+"Then!" cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand.  She
+tried to withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at
+him wistfully.
+
+"First of all," he said, "I want to tell you something about my
+family.  My Dad, you know, isn't altogether--I mean, he's left my
+mother and they're trying to divorce him; so they've ordered him to
+come back, you see.  You'll see that in the paper to-morrow."
+
+Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand squeezed
+his.  But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he hurried on:
+
+"Of course there's nothing very much at present, but there will be,
+I expect, before it's over; divorce suits are beastly, you know.  I
+wanted to tell you, because--because--you ought to know--if--" and
+he began to stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, "if--if you're
+going to be a darling and love me, Holly.  I love you--ever so; and
+I want to be engaged."  He had done it in a manner so inadequate
+that he could have punched his own head; and dropping on his knees,
+he tried to get nearer to that soft, troubled face.  "You do love
+me--don't you?  If you don't I...." There was a moment of silence
+and suspense, so awful that he could hear the sound of a mowing-
+machine far out on the lawn pretending there was grass to cut.
+Then she swayed forward; her free hand touched his hair, and he
+gasped: "Oh, Holly!"
+
+Her answer was very soft: "Oh, Val!"
+
+He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood, as
+the masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched,
+trembly.  He was afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break
+the spell; lest, if he did, she should shrink and deny her own
+surrender--so tremulous was she in his grasp, with her eyelids
+closed and his lips nearing them.  Her eyes opened, seemed to swim
+a little; he pressed his lips to hers.  Suddenly he sprang up;
+there had been footsteps, a sort of startled grunt.  He looked
+round.  No one!  But the long curtains which barred off the outer
+hall were quivering.
+
+"My God!  Who was that?"
+
+Holly too was on her feet.
+
+"Jolly, I expect," she whispered.
+
+Val clenched fists and resolution.
+
+"All right!" he said, "I don't care a bit now we're engaged," and
+striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside.  There at the
+fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately
+turned.  Val went forward.  Jolly faced round on him.
+
+"I beg your pardon for hearing," he said.
+
+With the best intentions in the world, Val could not help admiring
+him at that moment; his face was clear, his voice quiet, he looked
+somehow distinguished, as if acting up to principle.
+
+"Well!" Val said abruptly, "it's nothing to you."
+
+"Oh!" said Jolly; "you come this way," and he crossed the hall.
+Val followed.  At the study door he felt a touch on his arm;
+Holly's voice said:
+
+"I'm coming too."
+
+"No," said Jolly.
+
+"Yes," said Holly.
+
+Jolly opened the door, and they all three went in.  Once in the
+little room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of
+the worn Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each
+other, quite incapable of seeing any humour in the situation.
+
+Val broke the silence.
+
+"Holly and I are engaged.",
+
+Jolly stepped back and leaned against the lintel of the window.
+
+"This is our house," he said; "I'm not going to insult you in it.
+But my father's away.  I'm in charge of my sister.  You've taken
+advantage of me.
+
+"I didn't mean to," said Val hotly.
+
+"I think you did," said Jolly.  "If you hadn't meant to, you'd have
+spoken to me, or waited for my father to come back."
+
+"There were reasons," said Val.
+
+"What reasons?"
+
+"About my family--I've just told her.  I wanted her to know before
+things happen."
+
+Jolly suddenly became less distinguished.
+
+"You're kids," he said, "and you know you are.
+
+"I am not a kid," said Val.
+
+"You are--you're not twenty."
+
+"Well, what are you?"
+
+"I am twenty," said Jolly.
+
+"Only just; anyway, I'm as good a man as you."
+
+Jolly's face crimsoned, then clouded.  Some struggle was evidently
+taking place in him; and Val and Holly stared at him, so clearly
+was that struggle marked; they could even hear him breathing.  Then
+his face cleared up and became oddly resolute.
+
+"We'll see that," he said.  "I dare you to do what I'm going to
+do."
+
+"Dare me?"
+
+Jolly smiled.  "Yes," he said, "dare you; and I know very well you
+won't."
+
+A stab of misgiving shot through Val; this was riding very blind.
+
+"I haven't forgotten that you're a fire-eater," said Jolly slowly,
+"and I think that's about all you are; or that you called me a
+pro-Boer."
+
+Val heard a gasp above the sound of his own hard breathing, and saw
+Holly's face poked a little forward, very pale, with big eyes.
+
+"Yes," went on Jolly with a sort of smile, "we shall soon see.  I'm
+going to join the Imperial Yeomanry, and I dare you to do the same,
+Mr. Val Dartie."
+
+Val's head jerked on its stem.  It was like a blow between the
+eyes, so utterly unthought of, so extreme and ugly in the midst of
+his dreaming; and he looked at Holly with eyes grown suddenly,
+touchingly haggard.
+
+"Sit down!" said Jolly.  "Take your time!  Think it over well."
+And he himself sat down on the arm of his grandfather's chair.
+
+Val did not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his
+breeches' pockets-hands clenched and quivering.  The full awfulness
+of this decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with
+double knocks as of an angry postman.  If he did not take that
+'dare' he was disgraced in Holly's eyes, and in the eyes of that
+young enemy, her brute of a brother.  Yet if he took it, ah! then
+all would vanish--her face, her eyes, her hair, her kisses just
+begun!
+
+"Take your time," said Jolly again; "I don't want to be unfair."
+
+And they both looked at Holly.  She had recoiled against the
+bookshelves reaching to the ceiling; her dark head leaned against
+Gibbon's Roman Empire, her eyes in a sort of soft grey agony were
+fixed on Val.  And he, who had not much gift of insight, had
+suddenly a gleam of vision.  She would be proud of her brother--
+that enemy!  She would be ashamed of him!  His hands came out of
+his pockets as if lifted by a spring.
+
+"All right!" he said.  "Done!"
+
+Holly's face-oh! it was queer!  He saw her flush, start forward.
+He had done the right thing--her face was shining with wistful
+admiration.  Jolly stood up and made a little bow as who should
+say: 'You've passed.'
+
+"To-morrow, then," he said, "we'll go together."
+
+Recovering from the impetus which had carried him to that decision,
+Val looked at him maliciously from under his lashes.  'All right,'
+he thought, 'one to you.  I shall have to join--but I'll get back
+on you somehow.'  And he said with dignity: "I shall be ready."
+
+"We'll meet at the main Recruiting Office, then," said Jolly, "at
+twelve o'clock."  And, opening the window, he went out on to the
+terrace, conforming to the creed which had made him retire when he
+surprised them in the hall.
+
+The confusion in the mind of Val thus left alone with her for whom
+he had paid this sudden price was extreme.  The mood of 'showing-
+off' was still, however, uppermost.  One must do the wretched thing
+with an air.
+
+"We shall get plenty of riding and shooting, anyway," he said;
+"that's one comfort."  And it gave him a sort of grim pleasure to
+hear the sigh which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart.
+
+"Oh! the war'll soon be over," he said; "perhaps we shan't even
+have to go out.  I don't care, except for you."  He would be out of
+the way of that beastly divorce.  It was an ill-wind!  He felt her
+warm hand slip into his.  Jolly thought he had stopped their loving
+each other, did he?  He held her tightly round the waist, looking
+at her softly through his lashes, smiling to cheer her up,
+promising to come down and see her soon, feeling somehow six inches
+taller and much more in command of her than he had ever dared feel
+before.  Many times he kissed her before he mounted and rode back
+to town.  So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does the
+possessive instinct flourish and grow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DINNER AT JAMES'
+
+
+Dinner parties were not now given at James' in Park Lane--to every
+house the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer 'up to
+it'; no more can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above
+twenty fine white expanses; nor does the household cat any longer
+wonder why she is suddenly shut up.
+
+So with something like excitement Emily--who at seventy would still
+have liked a little feast and fashion now and then--ordered dinner
+for six instead of two, herself wrote a number of foreign words on
+cards, and arranged the flowers--mimosa from the Riviera, and white
+Roman hyacinths not from Rome.  There would only be, of course,
+James and herself, Soames, Winifred, Val, and Imogen--but she liked
+to pretend a little and dally in imagination with the glory of the
+past.  She so dressed herself that James remarked:
+
+"What are you putting on that thing for?  You'll catch cold."
+
+But Emily knew that the necks of women are protected by love of
+shining, unto fourscore years, and she only answered:
+
+"Let me put you on one of those dickies I got you, James; then
+you'll only have to change your trousers, and put on your velvet
+coat, and there you'll be.  Val likes you to look nice."
+
+"Dicky!" said James.  "You're always wasting your money on
+something."
+
+But he suffered the change to be made till his neck also shone,
+murmuring vaguely:
+
+"He's an extravagant chap, I'm afraid."
+
+A little brighter in the eye, with rather more colour than usual in
+his cheeks, he took his seat in the drawing-room to wait for the
+sound of the front-door bell.
+
+"I've made it a proper dinner party," Emily said comfortably; "I
+thought it would be good practice for Imogen--she must get used to
+it now she's coming out."
+
+James uttered an indeterminate sound, thinking of Imogen as she
+used to climb about his knee or pull Christmas crackers with him.
+
+"She'll be pretty," he muttered, "I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"She is pretty," said Emily; "she ought to make a good match."
+
+"There you go," murmured James; "she'd much better stay at home and
+look after her mother."  A second Dartie carrying off his pretty
+granddaughter would finish him!  He had never quite forgiven Emily
+for having been as much taken in by Montague Dartie as he himself
+had been.
+
+"Where's Warmson?" he said suddenly.  "I should like a glass of
+Madeira to-night."
+
+"There's champagne, James."
+
+James shook his head.  "No body," he said; "I can't get any good
+out of it."
+
+Emily reached forward on her side of the fire and rang the bell.
+
+"Your master would like a bottle of Madeira opened, Warmson."
+
+"No, no!" said James, the tips of his ears quivering with
+vehemence, and his eyes fixed on an object seen by him alone.
+"Look here, Warmson, you go to the inner cellar, and on the middle
+shelf of the end bin on the left you'll see seven bottles; take the
+one in the centre, and don't shake it.  It's the last of the
+Madeira I had from Mr. Jolyon when we came in here--never been
+moved; it ought to be in prime condition still; but I don't know, I
+can't tell."
+
+"Very good, sir," responded the withdrawing Warmson.
+
+"I was keeping it for our golden wedding," said James suddenly,
+"but I shan't live three years at my age."
+
+"Nonsense, James," said Emily, "don't talk like that."
+
+"I ought to have got it up myself," murmured James, "he'll shake it
+as likely as not."  And he sank into silent recollection of long
+moments among the open gas-jets, the cobwebs and the good smell of
+wine-soaked corks, which had been appetiser to so many feasts.  In
+the wine from that cellar was written the history of the forty odd
+years since he had come to the Park Lane house with his young
+bride, and of the many generations of friends and acquaintances who
+had passed into the unknown; its depleted bins preserved the record
+of family festivity--all the marriages, births, deaths of his kith
+and kin.  And when he was gone there it would be, and he didn't
+know what would become of it.  It'd be drunk or spoiled, he
+shouldn't wonder!
+
+>From that deep reverie the entrance of his son dragged him,
+followed very soon by that of Winifred and her two eldest.
+
+They went down arm-in-arm--James with Imogen, the debutante,
+because his pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred;
+Emily with Val, whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened.
+This was to be a proper full 'blowout' with 'fizz' and port!  And
+he felt in need of it, after what he had done that day, as yet
+undivulged.  After the first glass or two it became pleasant to
+have this bombshell up his sleeve, this piece of sensational
+patriotism, or example, rather, of personal daring, to display--for
+his pleasure in what he had done for his Queen and Country was so
+far entirely personal.  He was now a 'blood,' indissolubly
+connected with guns and horses; he had a right to swagger--not, of
+course, that he was going to.  He should just announce it quietly,
+when there was a pause.  And, glancing down the menu, he determined
+on 'Bombe aux fraises' as the proper moment; there would be a
+certain solemnity while they were eating that.  Once or twice
+before they reached that rosy summit of the dinner he was attacked
+by remembrance that his grandfather was never told anything!
+Still, the old boy was drinking Madeira, and looking jolly fit!
+Besides, he ought to be pleased at this set-off to the disgrace of
+the divorce.  The sight of his uncle opposite, too, was a sharp
+incentive.  He was so far from being a sportsman that it would be
+worth a lot to see his face.  Besides, better to tell his mother in
+this way than privately, which might upset them both!  He was sorry
+for her, but after all one couldn't be expected to feel much for
+others when one had to part from Holly.
+
+His grandfather's voice travelled to him thinly.  "Val, try a
+little of the Madeira with your ice.  You won't get that up at
+college."
+
+Val watched the slow liquid filling his glass, the essential oil of
+the old wine glazing the surface; inhaled its aroma, and thought:
+'Now for it!'  It was a rich moment.  He sipped, and a gentle glow
+spread in his veins, already heated.  With a rapid look round, he
+said, "I joined the Imperial Yeomanry to-day, Granny," and emptied
+his glass as though drinking the health of his own act.
+
+"What!"  It was his mother's desolate little word.
+
+"Young Jolly Forsyte and I went down there together."
+
+"You didn't sign?" from Uncle Soames.
+
+"Rather!  We go into camp on Monday."
+
+"I say!" cried Imogen.
+
+All looked at James.  He was leaning forward with his hand behind
+his ear.
+
+"What's that?" he said.  "What's he saying?  I can't hear."
+
+Emily reached forward to pat Val's hand.
+
+"It's only that Val has joined the Yeomanry, James; it's very nice
+for him.  He'll look his best in uniform."
+
+"Joined the--rubbish!" came from James, tremulously loud.  "You
+can't see two yards before your nose.  He--he'll have to go out
+there.  Why! he'll be fighting before he knows where he is."
+
+Val saw Imogen's eyes admiring him, and his mother still and
+fashionable with her handkerchief before her lips.
+
+Suddenly his uncle spoke.
+
+"You're under age."
+
+"I thought of that," smiled Val; "I gave my age as twenty-one."
+
+He heard his grandmother's admiring, "Well, Val, that was plucky of
+you;" was conscious of Warmson deferentially filling his champagne
+glass; and of his grandfather's voice moaning: "I don't know
+what'll become of you if you go on like this."
+
+Imogen was patting his shoulder, his uncle looking at him sidelong;
+only his mother sat unmoving, till, affected by her stillness, Val
+said:
+
+"It's all right, you know; we shall soon have them on the run.  I
+only hope I shall come in for something."
+
+He felt elated, sorry, tremendously important all at once.  This
+would show Uncle Soames, and all the Forsytes, how to be sportsmen.
+He had certainly done something heroic and exceptional in giving
+his age as twenty-one.
+
+Emily's voice brought him back to earth.
+
+"You mustn't have a second glass, James.  Warmson!"
+
+"Won't they be astonished at Timothy's!" burst out Imogen.  "I'd
+give anything to see their faces.  Do you have a sword, Val, or
+only a popgun?"
+
+"What made you?"
+
+His uncle's voice produced a slight chill in the pit of Val's
+stomach.  Made him?  How answer that?  He was grateful for his
+grandmother's comfortable:
+
+"Well, I think it's very plucky of Val.  I'm sure he'll make a
+splendid soldier; he's just the figure for it.  We shall all be
+proud of him."
+
+"What had young Jolly Forsyte to do with it?  Why did you go
+together?" pursued Soames, uncannily relentless.  "I thought you
+weren't friendly with him?"
+
+"I'm not," mumbled Val, "but I wasn't going to be beaten by him."
+He saw his uncle look at him quite differently, as if approving.
+His grandfather was nodding too, his grandmother tossing her head.
+They all approved of his not being beaten by that cousin of his.
+There must be a reason!  Val was dimly conscious of some disturbing
+point outside his range of vision; as it might be, the unlocated
+centre of a cyclone.  And, staring at his uncle's face, he had a
+quite unaccountable vision of a woman with dark eyes, gold hair,
+and a white neck, who smelt nice, and had pretty silken clothes
+which he had liked feeling when he was quite small.  By Jove, yes!
+Aunt Irene!  She used to kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once,
+playfully, because he liked it--so soft.  His grandfather was
+speaking:
+
+"What's his father doing?"
+
+"He's away in Paris," Val said, staring at the very queer
+expression on his uncle's face, like--like that of a snarling dog.
+
+"Artists!" said James.  The word coming from the very bottom of his
+soul, broke up the dinner.
+
+Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-
+fruits of heroism, like medlars over-ripe.
+
+She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor's at once and
+have his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they
+gave him.  But he could feel that she was very much upset.  It was
+on his lips to console her with the spoken thought that he would be
+out of the way of that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen,
+and the knowledge that his mother would not be out of the way,
+restrained him.  He felt aggrieved that she did not seem more proud
+of him.  When Imogen had gone to bed, he risked the emotional.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother."
+
+"Well, I must make the best of it.  We must try and get you a
+commission as soon as we can; then you won't have to rough it so.
+Do you know any drill, Val?"
+
+"Not a scrap."
+
+"I hope they won't worry you much.  I must take you about to get
+the things to-morrow.  Good-night; kiss me."
+
+With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, 'I
+hope they won't worry you much,' in his ears, he sat down to a
+cigarette, before a dying fire.  The heat was out of him--the glow
+of cutting a dash.  It was all a damned heart-aching bore.  'I'll
+be even with that chap Jolly,' he thought, trailing up the stairs,
+past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a
+sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob.
+
+And soon only one of the diners at James' was awake--Soames, in his
+bedroom above his father's.
+
+So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris--what was he doing there?
+Hanging round Irene!  The last report from Polteed had hinted that
+there might be something soon.  Could it be this?  That fellow,
+with his beard and his cursed amused way of speaking--son of the
+old man who had given him the nickname 'Man of Property,' and
+bought the fatal house from him.  Soames had ever resented having
+had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never forgiven his uncle for
+having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.
+
+Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across
+the Park.  Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of
+traffic; a frost coming; bare trees; a star or two.  'I'll see
+Polteed to-morrow,' he thought.  'By God!  I'm mad, I think, to
+want her still.  That fellow!  If...?  Um!  No!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR
+
+
+Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin--
+Hill on Sunday morning.  He had sent no word beforehand, so walked
+up from the station, entering his domain by the coppice gate.
+Coming to the log seat fashioned out of an old fallen trunk, he sat
+down, first laying his overcoat on it.
+
+'Lumbago!'  he thought; 'that's what love ends in at my time of
+life!'  And suddenly Irene seemed very near, just as she had been
+that day of rambling at Fontainebleau when they had sat on a log to
+eat their lunch.  Hauntingly near!  Odour drawn out of fallen
+leaves by the pale-filtering sunlight soaked his nostrils.  'I'm
+glad it isn't spring,' he thought.  With the scent of sap, and the
+song of birds, and the bursting of the blossoms, it would have been
+unbearable!  'I hope I shall be over it by then, old fool that I
+am!' and picking up his coat, he walked on into the field.  He
+passed the pond and mounted the hill slowly.
+
+Near the top a hoarse barking greeted him.  Up on the lawn above
+the fernery he could see his old dog Balthasar.  The animal, whose
+dim eyes took his master for a stranger, was warning the world
+against him.  Jolyon gave his special whistle.  Even at that
+distance of a hundred yards and more he could see the dawning
+recognition in the obese brown-white body.  The old dog got off his
+haunches, and his tail, close-curled over his back, began a feeble,
+excited fluttering; he came waddling forward, gathered momentum,
+and disappeared over the edge of the fernery.  Jolyon expected to
+meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar was not there, and,
+rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery.  On his fat side,
+looking up with eyes already glazing, the old dog lay.
+
+"What is it, my poor old man?" cried Jolyon.  Balthasar's curled
+and fluffy tail just moved; his filming eyes seemed saying: "I
+can't get up, master, but I'm glad to see you."
+
+Jolyon knelt down; his eyes, very dimmed, could hardly see the
+slowly ceasing heave of the dog's side.  He raised the head a
+little--very heavy.
+
+"What is it, dear man?  Where are you hurt?" The tail fluttered
+once; the eyes lost the look of life.  Jolyon passed his hands all
+over the inert warm bulk.  There was nothing--the heart had simply
+failed in that obese body from the emotion of his master's return.
+Jolyon could feel the muzzle, where a few whitish bristles grew,
+cooling already against his lips.  He stayed for some minutes
+kneeling; with his hand beneath the stiffening head.  The body was
+very heavy when he bore it to the top of the field; leaves had
+drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of them; there was
+no wind, and they would keep him from curious eyes until the
+afternoon.  'I'll bury him myself,' he thought.  Eighteen years had
+gone since he first went into the St. John's Wood house with that
+tiny puppy in his pocket.  Strange that the old dog should die just
+now!  Was it an omen?  He turned at the gate to look back at that
+russet mound, then went slowly towards the house, very choky in the
+throat.
+
+June was at home; she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news of
+Jolly's enlistment.  His patriotism had conquered her feeling for
+the Boers.  The atmosphere of his house was strange and pocketty
+when Jolyon came in and told them of the dog Balthasar's death.
+The news had a unifying effect.  A link with the past had snapped--
+the dog Balthasar!  Two of them could remember nothing before his
+day; to June he represented the last years of her grandfather; to
+Jolyon that life of domestic stress and aesthetic struggle before
+he came again into the kingdom of his father's love and wealth!
+And he was gone!
+
+In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out to
+the field.  They chose a spot close to the russet mound, so that
+they need not carry him far, and, carefully cutting off the surface
+turf, began to dig.  They dug in silence for ten minutes, and then
+rested.
+
+"Well, old man," said Jolyon, "so you thought you ought?"
+
+"Yes," answered Jolly; "I don't want to a bit, of course."
+
+How exactly those words represented Jolyon's own state of mind
+
+"I admire you for it, old boy.  I don't believe I should have done
+it at your age--too much of a Forsyte, I'm afraid.  But I suppose
+the type gets thinner with each generation.  Your son, if you have
+one, may be a pure altruist; who knows?"
+
+"He won't be like me, then, Dad; I'm beastly selfish."
+
+"No, my dear, that you clearly are not."  Jolly shook his head, and
+they dug again.
+
+"Strange life a dog's," said Jolyon suddenly: "The only four-footer
+with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!"
+
+Jolly looked at his father.
+
+"Do you believe in God, Dad?  I've never known."
+
+At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to
+make a light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back
+tried by the digging.
+
+"What do you mean by God?" he said; "there are two irreconcilable
+ideas of God.  There's the Unknowable Creative Principle--one
+believes in That.  And there's the Sum of altruism in man naturally
+one believes in That."
+
+"I see.  That leaves out Christ, doesn't it?"
+
+Jolyon stared.  Christ, the link between those two ideas!  Out of
+the mouth of babes!  Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at
+last!  The sublime poem of the Christ life was man's attempt to
+join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God.  And since the
+Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative
+Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe, a worse link
+might have been chosen after all!  Funny--how one went through life
+without seeing it in that sort of way!
+
+"What do you think, old man?" he said.
+
+Jolly frowned.  "Of course, my first year we talked a good bit
+about that sort of thing.  But in the second year one gives it up;
+I don't know why--it's awfully interesting."
+
+Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it his
+first year at Cambridge, and given it up in his second.
+
+"I suppose," said Jolly, "it's the second God, you mean, that old
+Balthasar had a sense of."
+
+"Yes, or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of
+something outside himself."
+
+"But wasn't that just selfish emotion, really?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head.  "No, dogs are not pure Forsytes, they love
+something outside themselves."
+
+Jolly smiled.
+
+"Well, I think I'm one," he said.  "You know, I only enlisted
+because I dared Val Dartie to."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"We bar each other," said Jolly shortly.
+
+"Ah!" muttered Jolyon.  So the feud went on, unto the third
+generation--this modern feud which had no overt expression?
+
+'Shall I tell the boy about it?' he thought.  But to what end--if
+he had to stop short of his own part?
+
+And Jolly thought: 'It's for Holly to let him know about that chap.
+If she doesn't, it means she doesn't want him told, and I should be
+sneaking.  Anyway, I've stopped it.  I'd better leave well alone!'
+
+So they dug on in silence, till Jolyon said:
+
+"Now, old man, I think it's big enough."  And, resting on their
+spades, they gazed down into the hole where a few leaves had
+drifted already on a sunset wind.
+
+"I can't bear this part of it," said Jolyon suddenly.
+
+"Let me do it, Dad.  He never cared much for me."
+
+Jolyon shook his head.
+
+"We'll lift him very gently, leaves and all.  I'd rather not see
+him again.  I'll take his head.  Now!"
+
+With extreme care they raised the old dog's body, whose faded tan
+and white showed here and there under the leaves stirred by the
+wind.  They laid it, heavy, cold, and unresponsive, in the grave,
+and Jolly spread more leaves over it, while Jolyon, deeply afraid
+to show emotion before his son, began quickly shovelling the earth
+on to that still shape.  There went the past!  If only there were a
+joyful future to look forward to!  It was like stamping down earth
+on one's own life.  They replaced the turf carefully on the smooth
+little mound, and, grateful that they had spared each other's
+feelings, returned to the house arm-in-arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TIMOTHY STAYS THE ROT
+
+
+On Forsyte 'Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together
+with the report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become a
+Red Cross nurse.  These events were so extreme, so subversive of
+pure Forsyteism, as to have a binding effect upon the family, and
+Timothy's was thronged next Sunday afternoon by members trying to
+find out what they thought about it all, and exchange with each
+other a sense of family credit.  Giles and Jesse Hayman would no
+longer defend the coast but go to South Africa quite soon; Jolly
+and Val would be following in April; as to June--well, you never
+knew what she would really do.
+
+The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news from
+the seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in
+startling fashion by Timothy.  The youngest of the old Forsytes--
+scarcely eighty, in fact popularly supposed to resemble their
+father, 'Superior Dosset,' even in his best-known characteristic of
+drinking Sherry--had been invisible for so many years that he was
+almost mythical.  A long generation had elapsed since the risks of
+a publisher's business had worked on his nerves at the age of
+forty, so that he had got out with a mere thirty-five thousand
+pounds in the world, and started to make his living by careful
+investment.  Putting by every year, at compound interest, he had
+doubled his capital in forty years without having once known what
+it was like to shake in his shoes over money matters.  He was now
+putting aside some two thousand a year, and, with the care he was
+taking of himself, expected, so Aunt Hester said, to double his
+capital again before he died.  What he would do with it then, with
+his sisters dead and himself dead, was often mockingly queried by
+free spirits such as Francie, Euphemia, or young Nicholas' second,
+Christopher, whose spirit was so free that he had actually said he
+was going on the stage.  All admitted, however, that this was best
+known to Timothy himself, and possibly to Soames, who never
+divulged a secret.
+
+Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and
+robust appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion, grey
+hair, and little of the refinement of feature with which most of
+the Forsytes had been endowed by 'Superior Dosset's' wife, a woman
+of some beauty and a gentle temperament.  It was known that he had
+taken surprising interest in the war, sticking flags into a map
+ever since it began, and there was uneasiness as to what would
+happen if the English were driven into the sea, when it would be
+almost impossible for him to put the flags in the right places.  As
+to his knowledge of family movements or his views about them,
+little was known, save that Aunt Hester was always declaring that
+he was very upset.  It was, then, in the nature of a portent when
+Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after the evacuation of Spion Kop,
+became conscious, one after the other, of a presence seated in the
+only really comfortable armchair, back to the light, concealing the
+lower part of his face with a large hand, and were greeted by the
+awed voice of Aunt Hester:
+
+"Your Uncle Timothy, my dear."
+
+Timothy's greeting to them all was somewhat identical; and rather,
+as it were, passed over by him than expressed:
+
+"How de do?  How de do?  'Xcuse me gettin' up!"
+
+Francie was present, and Eustace had come in his car; Winifred had
+brought Imogen, breaking the ice of the restitution proceedings
+with the warmth of family appreciation at Val's enlistment; and
+Marian Tweetyman with the last news of Giles and Jesse.  These with
+Aunt Juley and Hester, young Nicholas, Euphemia, and--of all
+people!--George, who had come with Eustace in the car, constituted
+an assembly worthy of the family's palmiest days.  There was not
+one chair vacant in the whole of the little drawing-room, and
+anxiety was felt lest someone else should arrive.
+
+The constraint caused by Timothy's presence having worn off a
+little, conversation took a military turn.  George asked Aunt Juley
+when she was going out with the Red Cross, almost reducing her to a
+state of gaiety; whereon he turned to Nicholas and said:
+
+"Young Nick's a warrior bold, isn't he?  When's he going to don the
+wild khaki?"
+
+Young Nicholas, smiling with a sort of sweet deprecation, intimated
+that of course his mother was very anxious.
+
+"The Dromios are off, I hear," said George, turning to Marian
+Tweetyman; "we shall all be there soon.  En avant, the Forsytes!
+Roll, bowl, or pitch!  Who's for a cooler?"
+
+Aunt Juley gurgled, George was so droll!  Should Hester get
+Timothy's map?  Then he could show them all where they were.
+
+At a sound from Timothy, interpreted as assent, Aunt Hester left
+the room.
+
+George pursued his image of the Forsyte advance, addressing Timothy
+as Field Marshal; and Imogen, whom he had noted at once for 'a
+pretty filly,'--as Vivandiere; and holding his top hat between his
+knees, he began to beat it with imaginary drumsticks.  The
+reception accorded to his fantasy was mixed.  All laughed--George
+was licensed; but all felt that the family was being 'rotted'; and
+this seemed to them unnatural, now that it was going to give five
+of its members to the service of the Queen.  George might go too
+far; and there was relief when he got up, offered his arm to Aunt
+Juley, marched up to Timothy, saluted him, kissed his aunt with
+mock passion, said, "Oh!  what a treat, dear papa!  Come on,
+Eustace!" and walked out, followed by the grave and fastidious
+Eustace, who had never smiled.
+
+Aunt Juley's bewildered, "Fancy not waiting for the map!  You
+mustn't mind him, Timothy.  He's so droll!" broke the hush, and
+Timothy removed the hand from his mouth.
+
+"I don't know what things are comin' to," he was heard to say.
+"What's all this about goin' out there?  That's not the way to beat
+those Boers."
+
+Francie alone had the hardihood to observe: "What is, then, Uncle
+Timothy?"
+
+"All this new-fangled volunteerin' and expense--lettin' money out
+of the country."
+
+Just then Aunt Hester brought in the map, handling it like a baby
+with eruptions.  With the assistance of Euphemia it was laid on the
+piano, a small Colwood grand, last played on, it was believed, the
+summer before Aunt Ann died, thirteen years ago.  Timothy rose.  He
+walked over to the piano, and stood looking at his map while they
+all gathered round.
+
+"There you are," he said; "that's the position up to date; and very
+poor it is.  H'm!"
+
+"Yes," said Francie, greatly daring, "but how are you going to
+alter it, Uncle Timothy, without more men?"
+
+"Men!" said Timothy; "you don't want men--wastin' the country's
+money.  You want a Napoleon, he'd settle it in a month."
+
+"But if you haven't got him, Uncle Timothy?"
+
+"That's their business," replied Timothy.  "What have we kept the
+Army up for--to eat their heads off in time of peace!  They ought
+to be ashamed of themselves, comin' on the country to help them
+like this!  Let every man stick to his business, and we shall get
+on."
+
+And looking round him, he added almost angrily:
+
+"Volunteerin', indeed!  Throwin' good money after bad!  We must
+save!  Conserve energy that's the only way."  And with a prolonged
+sound, not quite a sniff and not quite a snort, he trod on
+Euphemia's toe, and went out, leaving a sensation and a faint scent
+of barley-sugar behind him.
+
+The effect of something said with conviction by one who has
+evidently made a sacrifice to say it is ever considerable.  And the
+eight Forsytes left behind, all women except young Nicholas, were
+silent for a moment round the map.  Then Francie said:
+
+"Really, I think he's right, you know.  After all, what is the Army
+for?  They ought to have known.  It's only encouraging them."
+
+"My dear!" cried Aunt Juley, "but they've been so progressive.
+Think of their giving up their scarlet.  They were always so proud
+of it.  And now they all look like convicts.  Hester and I were
+saying only yesterday we were sure they must feel it very much.
+Fancy what the Iron Duke would have said!"
+
+"The new colour's very smart," said Winifred; "Val looks quite nice
+in his."
+
+Aunt Juley sighed.
+
+"I do so wonder what Jolyon's boy is like.  To think we've never
+seen him!  His father must be so proud of him."
+
+"His father's in Paris," said Winifred.
+
+Aunt Hester's shoulder was seen to mount suddenly, as if to ward
+off her sister's next remark, for Juley's crumpled cheeks had
+gushed.
+
+"We had dear little Mrs. MacAnder here yesterday, just back from
+Paris.  And whom d'you think she saw there in the street?  You'll
+never guess."
+
+"We shan't try, Auntie," said Euphemia.
+
+"Irene!  Imagine!  After all this time; walking with a fair
+beard...."
+
+"Auntie! you'll kill me!  A fair beard...."
+
+"I was going to say," said Aunt Juley severely, "a fair-bearded
+gentleman.  And not a day older; she was always so pretty," she
+added, with a sort of lingering apology.
+
+"Oh! tell us about her, Auntie," cried Imogen; "I can just remember
+her.  She's the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn't she?  And
+they're such fun."
+
+Aunt Hester sat down.  Really, Juley had done it now!
+
+"She wasn't much of a skeleton as I remember her," murmured
+Euphemia, "extremely well-covered."
+
+"My dear!" said Aunt Juley, "what a peculiar way of putting it--not
+very nice."
+
+"No, but what was she like?" persisted Imogen.
+
+"I'll tell you, my child," said Francie; "a kind of modern Venus,
+very well-dressed."
+
+Euphemia said sharply: "Venus was never dressed, and she had blue
+eyes of melting sapphire."
+
+At this juncture Nicholas took his leave.
+
+"Mrs. Nick is awfully strict," said Francie with a laugh.
+
+"She has six children," said Aunt Juley; "it's very proper she
+should be careful."
+
+"Was Uncle Soames awfully fond of her?" pursued the inexorable
+Imogen, moving her dark luscious eyes from face to face.
+
+Aunt Hester made a gesture of despair, just as Aunt Juley answered:
+
+"Yes, your Uncle Soames was very much attached to her."
+
+"I suppose she ran off with someone?"
+
+"No, certainly not; that is--not precisely.'
+
+"What did she do, then, Auntie?"
+
+"Come along, Imogen," said Winifred, "we must be getting back."
+
+But Aunt Juley interjected resolutely: "She--she didn't behave at
+all well."
+
+"Oh, bother!" cried Imogen; "that's as far as I ever get."
+
+"Well, my dear," said Francie, "she had a love affair which ended
+with the young man's death; and then she left your uncle.  I always
+rather liked her."
+
+"She used to give me chocolates," murmured Imogen, "and smell
+nice."
+
+"Of course!" remarked Euphemia.
+
+"Not of course at all!" replied Francie, who used a particularly
+expensive essence of gillyflower herself.
+
+"I can't think what we are about," said Aunt Juley, raising her
+hands, "talking of such things!"
+
+"Was she divorced?" asked Imogen from the door.
+
+"Certainly not," cried Aunt Juley; "that is--certainly not."
+
+A sound was heard over by the far door.  Timothy had re-entered the
+back drawing-room.  "I've come for my map," he said.  "Who's been
+divorced?"
+
+"No one, Uncle," replied Francie with perfect truth.
+
+Timothy took his map off the piano.
+
+"Don't let's have anything of that sort in the family," he said.
+"All this enlistin's bad enough.  The country's breakin' up; I
+don't know what we're comin' to."  He shook a thick finger at the
+room: "Too many women nowadays, and they don't know what they
+want."
+
+So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went out
+as if afraid of being answered.
+
+The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued murmur,
+out of which emerged Francie's, "Really, the Forsytes!" and Aunt
+Juley's: "He must have his feet in mustard and hot water to-night,
+Hester; will you tell Jane?  The blood has gone to his head again,
+I'm afraid...."
+
+That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after dinner,
+she dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:
+
+"Hester, I can't think where I've heard that dear Soames wants
+Irene to come back to him again.  Who was it told us that George
+had made a funny drawing of him with the words, 'He won't be happy
+till he gets it'?"
+
+"Eustace," answered Aunt Hester from behind The Times; "he had it
+in his pocket, but he wouldn't show it us."
+
+Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating.  The clock ticked, The Times
+crackled, the fire sent forth its rustling purr.  Aunt Juley
+dropped another stitch.
+
+"Hester," she said, "I have had such a dreadful thought."
+
+"Then don't tell me," said Aunt Hester quickly.
+
+"Oh!  but I must.  You can't think how dreadful" Her voice sank to
+a whisper:
+
+"Jolyon--Jolyon, they say, has a--has a fair beard, now."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+PROGRESS OF THE CHASE
+
+
+Two days after the dinner at James', Mr. Polteed provided Soames
+with food for thought.
+
+"A gentleman," he said, consulting the key concealed in his left
+hand, "47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17 during
+the last month in Paris.  But at present there seems to have been
+nothing very conclusive.  The meetings have all been in public
+places, without concealment--restaurants, the Opera, the Comique,
+the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and so forth.
+She has not yet been traced to his rooms, nor vice versa.  They
+went to Fontainebleau--but nothing of value.  In short, the
+situation is promising, but requires patience."  And, looking up
+suddenly, he added:
+
+"One rather curious point--47 has the same name as--er--31!"
+
+'The fellow knows I'm her husband,' thought Soames.
+
+"Christian name--an odd one--Jolyon," continued Mr. Polteed.  "We
+know his address in Paris and his residence here.  We don't wish,
+of course, to be running a wrong hare."
+
+"Go on with it, but be careful," said Soames doggedly.
+
+Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his
+secret made him all the more reticent.
+
+"Excuse me," said Mr. Polteed, "I'll just see if there's anything
+fresh in."
+
+He returned with some letters.  Relocking the door, he glanced at
+the envelopes.
+
+"Yes, here's a personal one from 19 to myself."
+
+"Well?" said Soames.
+
+ "Um!" said Mr. Polteed, "she says: '47 left for England to-day.
+Address on his baggage: Robin Hill.  Parted from 17 in Louvre
+Gallery at 3.30; nothing very striking.  Thought it best to stay
+and continue observation of 17.  You will deal with 47 in England
+if you think desirable, no doubt.'"  And Mr. Polteed lifted an
+unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing
+material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of
+business.  "Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful make-up.
+Not cheap, but earns her money well.  There's no suspicion of being
+shadowed so far.  But after a time, as you know, sensitive people
+are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything definite to
+go on.  I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and keeping an eye
+on 47.  We can't get at correspondence without great risk.  I
+hardly advise that at this stage.  But you can tell your client
+that it's looking up very well."  And again his narrowed eyes
+gleamed at his taciturn customer.
+
+"No," said Soames suddenly, "I prefer that you should keep the
+watch going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with this
+end."
+
+"Very well," replied Mr. Polteed, "we can do it.
+
+"What--what is the manner between them?"
+
+"I'll read you what she says," said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau
+drawer and taking out a file of papers; "she sums it up somewhere
+confidentially.  Yes, here it is!  '17 very attractive--conclude
+47, longer in the tooth' (slang for age, you know)--'distinctly
+gone--waiting his time--17 perhaps holding off for terms,
+impossible to say without knowing more.  But inclined to think on
+the whole--doesn't know her mind--likely to act on impulse some
+day.  Both have style.'"
+
+"What does that mean?" said Soames between close lips.
+
+"Well," murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white
+teeth, "an expression we use.  In other words, it's not likely to
+be a weekend business--they'll come together seriously or not at
+all."
+
+"H'm!" muttered Soames, "that's all, is it?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Polteed, "but quite promising."
+
+'Spider!' thought Soames.  "Good-day!"
+
+He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria
+Station and take the Underground into the City.  For so late in
+January it was warm; sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the
+frosty grass--an illumined cobweb of a day.
+
+Little spiders--and great spiders!  And the greatest spinner of
+all, his own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads
+round any clear way out.  What was that fellow hanging round Irene
+for?  Was it really as Polteed suggested?  Or was Jolyon but taking
+compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it--sentimental
+radical chap that he had always been?  If it were, indeed, as
+Polteed hinted!  Soames stood still.  It could not be!  The fellow
+was seven years older than himself, no better looking!  No richer!
+What attraction had he?
+
+'Besides, he's come back,' he thought; 'that doesn't look---I'll go
+and see him!' and, taking out a card, he wrote:
+
+"If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall be
+at the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could come to
+the Hotch Potch if you prefer it.  I want to see you.--S. F."
+
+He walked up St.  James's Street and confided it to the porter at
+the Hotch Potch.
+
+"Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in," he said, and
+took one of the new motor cabs into the City....
+
+Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face
+towards the Connoisseurs.  What did Soames want now?  Had he got
+wind of Paris?  And stepping across St. James's Street, he
+determined to make no secret of his visit.  'But it won't do,' he
+thought, 'to let him know she's there, unless he knows already.'
+In this complicated state of mind he was conducted to where Soames
+was drinking tea in a small bay-window.
+
+"No tea, thanks," said Jolyon, "but I'll go on smoking if I may."
+
+The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were
+lighted; the two cousins sat waiting on each other.
+
+"You've been in Paris, I hear," said Soames at last.
+
+"Yes; just back."
+
+"Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?" Jolyon
+nodded.
+
+"You didn't happen to see Irene, I suppose.  It appears she's
+abroad somewhere."
+
+Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: "Yes, I saw
+her."
+
+"How was she?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his chair.
+
+"When I saw you last," he said, "I was in two minds.  We talked,
+and you expressed your opinion.  I don't wish to reopen that
+discussion.  I only wanted to say this: My position with her is
+extremely difficult.  I don't want you to go using your influence
+against me.  What happened is a very long time ago.  I'm going to
+ask her to let bygones be bygones."
+
+"You have asked her, you know," murmured Jolyon.
+
+"The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock.  But the more
+she thinks of it, the more she must see that it's the only way out
+for both of us."
+
+"That's not my impression of her state of mind," said Jolyon with
+particular calm.  "And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the
+matter if you think reason comes into it at all."
+
+He saw his cousin's pale face grow paler--he had used, without
+knowing it, Irene's own words.
+
+"Thanks," muttered Soames, "but I see things perhaps more plainly
+than you think.  I only want to be sure that you won't try to
+influence her against me."
+
+"I don't know what makes you think I have any influence," said
+Jolyon; "but if I have I'm bound to use it in the direction of what
+I think is her happiness.  I am what they call a 'feminist,' I
+believe."
+
+"Feminist!" repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time.  "Does
+that mean that you're against me?"
+
+"Bluntly," said Jolyon, "I'm against any woman living with any man
+whom she definitely dislikes.  It appears to me rotten."
+
+"And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into her
+mind."
+
+"I am not likely to be seeing her."
+
+"Not going back to Paris?"
+
+"Not so far as I know," said Jolyon, conscious of the intent
+watchfulness in Soames' face.
+
+"Well, that's all I had to say.  Anyone who comes between man and
+wife, you know, incurs heavy responsibility."
+
+Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved
+away, leaving Soames staring after him.  'We Forsytes,' thought
+Jolyon, hailing a cab, 'are very civilised.  With simpler folk that
+might have come to a row.  If it weren't for my boy going to the
+war....'  The war!  A gust of his old doubt swept over him.  A
+precious war!  Domination of peoples or of women!  Attempts to
+master and possess those who did not want you!  The negation of
+gentle decency!  Possession, vested rights; and anyone 'agin' 'em--
+outcast!  'Thank Heaven!'  he thought, 'I always felt "agin" 'em,
+anyway!'  Yes!  Even before his first disastrous marriage he could
+remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial
+suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed.  Parsons
+would have it that freedom of soul and body were quite different
+things!  Pernicious doctrine!  Body and soul could not thus be
+separated.  Free will was the strength of any tie, and not its
+weakness.  'I ought to have told Soames,' he thought, 'that I think
+him comic.  Ah! but he's tragic, too!'   Was there anything,
+indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own
+possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even enter
+fully into what another person felt!  'I must write and warn her,'
+he thought; 'he's going to have another try.'  And all the way home
+to Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son
+which prevented him from posting back to Paris....
+
+But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing
+ache--a jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this
+fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of
+resistance to his way out.  'Does that mean that you're against
+me?' he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question.
+Feminist!  Phrasey fellow!  'I mustn't rush things,' he thought.
+'I have some breathing space; he's not going back to Paris, unless
+he was lying.  I'll let the spring come!'  Though how the spring
+could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell.
+And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from
+pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: 'Nothing
+seems any good--nothing seems worth while.  I'm loney--that's the
+trouble.'
+
+He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark
+street below a church--passing, turning her neck so that he caught
+the gleam of her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark
+hat, which had gold spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind.
+He opened his eyes--so vividly he had seen her!  A woman was
+passing below, but not she!  Oh no, there was nothing there!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HERE WE ARE AGAIN!'
+
+
+Imogen's frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her
+mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of
+March.  With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection.  It
+took her mind off the slowly approaching rite which would give her
+a freedom but doubtfully desired; took her mind, too, off her boy
+and his fast approaching departure for a war from which the news
+remained disquieting.  Like bees busy on summer flowers, or bright
+gadflies hovering and darting over spiky autumn blossoms, she and
+her 'little daughter,' tall nearly as herself and with a bust
+measurement not far inferior, hovered in the shops of Regent
+Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond Street,
+lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics.  Dozens of young
+women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before
+Winifred and Imogen, draped in 'creations.'  The models--'Very new,
+modom; quite the latest thing--' which those two reluctantly turned
+down, would have filled a museum; the models which they were
+obliged to have nearly emptied James' bank.  It was no good doing
+things by halves, Winifred felt, in view of the need for making
+this first and sole untarnished season a conspicuous success.
+Their patience in trying the patience of those impersonal creatures
+who swam about before them could alone have been displayed by such
+as were moved by faith.  It was for Winifred a long prostration
+before her dear goddess Fashion, fervent as a Catholic might make
+before the Virgin; for Imogen an experience by no means too
+unpleasant--she often looked so nice, and flattery was implicit
+everywhere: in a word it was 'amusing.'
+
+On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted
+Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and
+Baker's, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with cream,
+turned homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening touched with
+spring.  Opening the door--freshly painted a light olive-green;
+nothing neglected that year to give Imogen a good send-off--
+Winifred passed towards the silver basket to see if anyone had
+called, and suddenly her nostrils twitched.  What was that scent?
+
+Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood
+absorbed.  Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her
+breast, Winifred said:
+
+"Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner."
+
+Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs.  Winifred heard the
+door of her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath.  Was
+it spring tickling her senses--whipping up nostalgia for her
+'clown,' against all wisdom and outraged virtue?  A male scent!  A
+faint reek of cigars and lavender-water not smelt since that early
+autumn night six months ago, when she had called him 'the limit.'
+Whence came it, or was it ghost of scent--sheer emanation from
+memory?  She looked round her.  Nothing--not a thing, no tiniest
+disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom.  A little day-dream
+of a scent--illusory, saddening, silly!  In the silver basket were
+new cards, two with 'Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,' and one with 'Mr.
+Polegate Thom' thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled severe.
+'I must be tired,' she thought, 'I'll go and lie down.'  Upstairs
+the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it
+evening light; and she passed on up to her bedroom.  This, too, was
+half-curtained and dim, for it was six o'clock.  Winifred threw off
+her coat--that scent again!--then stood, as if shot, transfixed
+against the bed-rail.  Something dark had risen from the sofa in
+the far corner.  A word of horror--in her family--escaped her:
+"God!"
+
+"It's I--Monty," said a voice.
+
+Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch
+of the light hanging above her dressing-table.  He appeared just on
+the rim of the light's circumference, emblazoned from the absence
+of his watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown, but--yes!--
+split at the toecap.  His chest and face were shadowy.  Surely he
+was thin--or was it a trick of the light?  He advanced, lighted now
+from toe-cap to the top of his dark head-surely a little grizzled!
+His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost
+boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know
+about his face.  There was no pin in his tie.  His suit--ah!--she
+knew that--but how unpressed, unglossy!  She stared again at the
+toe-cap of his boot.  Something big and relentless had been 'at
+him,' had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him.  And she
+stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the
+toe.
+
+"Well!" he said, "I got the order.  I'm back."
+
+Winifred's bosom began to heave.  The nostalgia for her husband
+which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper
+jealousy than any she had felt yet.  There he was--a dark, and as
+if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self!  What force had
+done this to him--squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind!
+That woman!
+
+"I'm back," he said again.  "I've had a beastly time.  By God!  I
+came steerage.  I've got nothing but what I stand up in, and that
+bag."
+
+"And who has the rest?" cried Winifred, suddenly alive.  "How dared
+you come?  You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order
+to come back.  Don't touch me!"
+
+They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so
+many years of nights together.  Many times, yes--many times she had
+wanted him back.  But now that he had come she was filled with this
+cold and deadly resentment.  He put his hand up to his moustache;
+but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar way, he just
+pulled it downwards.
+
+"Gad!" he said: "If you knew the time I've had!"
+
+"I'm glad I don't!"
+
+"Are the kids all right?"
+
+Winifred nodded.  "How did you get in?"
+
+"With my key."
+
+"Then the maids don't know.  You can't stay here, Monty."
+
+He uttered a little sardonic laugh.
+
+"Where then?"
+
+"Anywhere."
+
+"Well, look at me!  That--that damned...."
+
+"If you mention her," cried Winifred, "I go straight out to Park
+Lane and I don't come back."
+
+Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it
+moved her.  He shut his eyes.  It was as if he had said: 'All
+right!  I'm dead to the world!'
+
+"You can have a room for the night," she said; "your things are
+still here.  Only Imogen is at home."
+
+He leaned back against the bed-rail.  "Well, it's in your hands,"
+and his own made a writhing movement.  "I've been through it.  You
+needn't hit too hard--it isn't worth while.  I've been frightened;
+I've been frightened, Freddie."
+
+That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver
+through Winifred.
+
+'What am I to do with him?' she thought.  'What in God's name am I
+to do with him?'
+
+"Got a cigarette?"
+
+She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she
+couldn't sleep at night, and lighted it.  With that action the
+matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.
+
+"Go and have a hot bath.  I'll put some clothes out for you in the
+dressing-room.  We can talk later."
+
+He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her--they looked half-dead, or was
+it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?
+
+'He's not the same,' she thought.  He would never be quite the same
+again!  But what would he be?
+
+"All right!"   he said, and went towards the door.  He even moved
+differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it
+is worth while to move at all.
+
+When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she
+put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room,
+then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky.
+Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment at the bathroom
+door, she went down and out.  In the street she hesitated.  Past
+seven o'clock!  Would Soames be at his Club or at Park Lane?  She
+turned towards the latter.  Back!
+
+Soames had always feared it--she had sometimes hoped it....  Back!
+So like him--clown that he was--with this: 'Here we are again!' to
+make fools of them all--of the Law, of Soames, of herself!
+
+Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging
+over her and the children!  What a relief!  Ah!  but how to accept
+his return?  That 'woman' had ravaged him, taken from him passion
+such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not
+thought him capable of.  There was the sting!  That selfish,
+blatant 'clown' of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred,
+had been swept and ungarnished by another woman!  Insulting!  Too
+insulting!  Not right, not decent to take him back!  And yet she
+had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now!  He was as
+much her husband as ever--she had put herself out of court!  And
+all he wanted, no doubt, was money--to keep him in cigars and
+lavender-water!  That scent!  'After all, I'm not old,' she
+thought, 'not old yet!'  But that woman who had reduced him to
+those words: 'I've been through it.  I've been frightened--
+frightened, Freddie!'  She neared her father's house, driven this
+way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing
+her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be
+held against a robbing world.  And so she came to James'.
+
+"Mr. Soames?  In his room?  I'll go up; don't say I'm here."
+
+Her brother was dressing.  She found him before a mirror, tying a
+black bow with an air of despising its ends.
+
+"Hullo!" he said, contemplating her in the glass; "what's wrong?"
+
+"Monty!" said Winifred stonily.
+
+Soames spun round.  "What!"
+
+"Back!"
+
+"Hoist," muttered Soames, "with our own petard.  Why the deuce
+didn't you let me try cruelty?  I always knew it was too much risk
+this way."
+
+"Oh! Don't talk about that!  What shall I do?"
+
+Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.
+
+"Well?" said Winifred impatiently.
+
+"What has he to say for himself?"
+
+"Nothing.  One of his boots is split across the toe."
+
+Soames stared at her.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "of course!  On his beam ends.  So--it begins again!
+This'll about finish father."
+
+"Can't we keep it from him?"
+
+"Impossible.  He has an uncanny flair for anything that's
+worrying."
+
+And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces.
+"There ought to be some way in law," he muttered, "to make him
+safe."
+
+"No," cried Winifred, "I won't be made a fool of again; I'd sooner
+put up with him."
+
+The two stared at each other.  Their hearts were full of feeling,
+but they could give it no expression--Forsytes that they were.
+
+"Where did you leave him?"
+
+"In the bath," and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh.  "The only
+thing he's brought back is lavender-water."
+
+"Steady!" said Soames, "you're thoroughly upset.  I'll go back with
+you."
+
+"What's the use?"
+
+"We ought to make terms with him."
+
+"Terms!  It'll always be the same.  When he recovers--cards and
+betting, drink and ....!"   She was silent, remembering the look on
+her husband's face.  The burnt child--the burnt child.  Perhaps...!
+
+"Recovers?" replied Soames: "Is he ill?"
+
+"No; burnt out; that's all."
+
+Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his
+coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau-de-
+Cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: "We haven't any luck."
+
+And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as
+if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own.
+
+"I'd like to see mother," she said.
+
+"She'll be with father in their room.  Come down quietly to the
+study.  I'll get her."
+
+Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable
+for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine
+collection of Law Reports unopened for many years.  Here she stood,
+with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at
+the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by Soames.
+
+"Oh! my poor dear!" said Emily: "How miserable you look in here!
+This is too bad of him, really!"
+
+As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of
+all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give
+her daughter a good hug.  But there was comfort in her cushioned
+voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace.
+Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred
+said in her most off-hand voice:
+
+"It's all right, Mother; no good fussing."
+
+"I don't see," said Emily, looking at Soames, "why Winifred
+shouldn't tell him that she'll prosecute him if he doesn't keep off
+the premises.  He took her pearls; and if he's not brought them
+back, that's quite enough."
+
+Winifred smiled.  They would all plunge about with suggestions of
+this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and
+that was--nothing.  The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort
+of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground
+in her.  No!  if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home
+without the world knowing.
+
+" Well," said Emily, "come into the diningroom comfortably--you
+must stay and have dinner with us.  Leave it to me to tell your
+father."  And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out
+the light.  Not till then did they see the disaster in the
+corridor.
+
+There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was
+standing with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him, so
+that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut off
+from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert.
+He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if he saw
+before him a frog too large to swallow.
+
+"What's all this?" he said.  "Tell your father?  You never tell me
+anything."
+
+The moment found Emily without reply.  It was Winifred who went up
+to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms,
+said:
+
+"Monty's not gone bankrupt, Father.  He's only come back."
+
+They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad
+she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth
+of root in that shadowy old Forsyte.  Something wry occurred about
+his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long
+silvery whiskers.  Then he said with a sort of dignity: "He'll be
+the death of me.  I knew how it would be."
+
+"You mustn't worry, Father," said Winifred calmly.  "I mean to make
+him behave."
+
+"Ah!" said James.  "Here, take this thing off, I'm hot."  They
+unwound the shawl.  He turned, and walked firmly to the dining-
+room.
+
+"I don't want any soup," he said to Warmson, and sat down in his
+chair.  They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while
+Warmson laid the fourth place.  When he left the room, James said:
+"What's he brought back?"
+
+"Nothing, Father."
+
+James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon.
+"Divorce!" he muttered; "rubbish!  What was I about?  I ought to
+have paid him an allowance to stay out of England.  Soames you go
+and propose it to him."
+
+It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was
+surprised when she said: "No, I'll keep him now he's back; he must
+just behave--that's all."
+
+They all looked at her.  It had always been known that Winifred had
+pluck.
+
+"Out there!" said James elliptically, "who knows what cut-throats!
+You look for his revolver!  Don't go to bed without.  You ought to
+have Warmson to sleep in the house.  I'll see him myself tomorrow."
+
+They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably:
+"That's right, James, we won't have any nonsense."
+
+"Ah!" muttered James darkly, "I can't tell."
+
+The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.
+
+When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father
+good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress
+that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.
+
+"It's all right, Daddy, dear; don't worry.  I shan't need anyone--
+he's quite bland.  I shall only be upset if you worry.  Good-night,
+bless you!"
+
+James repeated the words, "Bless you!" as if he did not quite know
+what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.
+
+She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.
+
+Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed
+in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his
+head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.
+
+Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes
+after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood--
+parched, yet rested by the sun's retreat.  It was as if a little
+dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.
+
+He said apathetically: "I suppose you've been to Park Lane.  How's
+the old man?"
+
+Winifred could not help the bitter answer: "Not dead."
+
+He winced, actually he winced.
+
+"Understand, Monty," she said, "I will not have him worried.  If
+you aren't going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go
+anywhere.  Have you had dinner?"
+
+No.
+
+"Would you like some?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Imogen offered me some.  I didn't want any."
+
+Imogen!  In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.
+
+"So you've seen her?  What did she say?"
+
+"She gave me a kiss."
+
+With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed.
+'Yes!' she thought, 'he cares for her, not for me a bit.'
+
+Dartie's eyes were moving from side to side.
+
+"Does she know about me?" he said.
+
+It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed.
+He minded their knowing!
+
+"No.  Val knows.  The others don't; they only know you went away."
+
+She heard him sigh with relief.
+
+"But they shall know," she said firmly, "if you give me cause."
+
+"All right!" he muttered, "hit me!  I'm down!"
+
+Winifred went up to the bed.  "Look here, Monty!  I don't want to
+hit you.  I don't want to hurt you.  I shan't allude to anything.
+I'm not going to worry.  What's the use?" She was silent a moment.
+"I can't stand any more, though, and I won't!  You'd better know.
+You've made me suffer.  But I used to be fond of you.  For the sake
+of that...."  She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with
+the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand
+suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.
+
+She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings,
+thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the
+bed in the other room; resolutely not 'worrying,' but gnawed by
+jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just
+visited by pity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+OUTLANDISH NIGHT
+
+Soames doggedly let the spring come--no easy task for one conscious
+that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no
+issue from the web anywhere visible.  Mr. Polteed reported nothing,
+except that his watch went on--costing a lot of money.  Val and his
+cousin were gone to the war, whence came news more favourable;
+Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had retained his health;
+business prospered almost terribly--there was nothing to worry
+Soames except that he was 'held up,' could make no step in any
+direction.
+
+He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them
+think that he had 'piped off,' as James would have put it--he might
+want to 'pipe on' again at any minute.  But he had to be so
+restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the
+Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the
+purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of having
+been possessively irregular.
+
+He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most
+amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,
+jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses
+and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage
+of idiocy, as it seemed to him.  Mafeking!  Of course, it had been
+relieved!  Good!  But was that an excuse?  Who were these people,
+what were they, where had they come from into the West End?  His
+face was tickled, his ears whistled into.  Girls cried: 'Keep your
+hair on, stucco!'  A youth so knocked off his top-hat that he
+recovered it with difficulty.  Crackers were exploding beneath his
+nose, between his feet.  He was bewildered, exasperated, offended.
+This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse had
+unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters of whose existence he had
+heard, perhaps, but believed in never.  This, then, was the
+populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and
+Forsyteism.  This was--egad!--Democracy!  It stank, yelled, was
+hideous!  In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps--but here in
+Regent Street, in Piccadilly!  What were, the police about!  In
+1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the
+cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly
+believe his scorching eyes.  The whole thing was unspeakable!
+These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny; such
+swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing--and what laughter!
+
+Nothing sacred to them!  He shouldn't be surprised if they began to
+break windows.  In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter
+which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing
+dervish of a crowd was swarming.  From the Club windows his own
+kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.  They
+didn't realise!  Why, this was serious--might come to anything!
+The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in different
+mood!  He remembered there had been a mob in the late eighties,
+when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and made speeches.
+But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise.  They were hysterical
+--it wasn't English!  And all about the relief of a little town as
+big as--Watford, six thousand miles away.  Restraint, reserve!
+Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those
+indispensable attributes of property and culture, where were they?
+It wasn't English!  No, it wasn't English!  So Soames brooded,
+threading his way on.  It was as if he had suddenly caught sight of
+someone cutting the covenant 'for quiet possession' out of his
+legal documents; or of a monster lurking and stalking out in the
+future, casting its shadow before.  Their want of stolidity, their
+want of reverence!  It was like discovering that nine-tenths of the
+people of England were foreigners.  And if that were so--then,
+anything might happen!
+
+At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt from
+racing, holding a false nose in his hand.
+
+"Hallo, Soames!" he said, "have a nose!"
+
+Soames responded with a pale smile.
+
+"Got this from one of these sportsmen," went on George, who had
+evidently been dining; "had to lay him out--for trying to bash my
+hat.  I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,
+they're getting so damned cheeky--all radicals and socialists.
+They want our goods.  You tell Uncle James that, it'll make him
+sleep."
+
+'In vino veritas,' thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed
+on up Hamilton Place.  There was but a trickle of roysterers in
+Park Lane, not very noisy.  And looking up at the houses he
+thought: 'After all, we're the backbone of the country.  They won't
+upset us easily.  Possession's nine points of the law.'
+
+But, as he closed the door of his father's house behind him, all
+that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his
+mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had awakened
+in the warm clean morning comfort of his spring-mattressed bed.
+
+Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood
+still.
+
+A wife!  Somebody to talk things over with.  One had a right!  Damn
+it!  One had a right!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOAMES IN PARIS
+
+
+Soames had travelled little.  Aged nineteen he had made the 'petty
+tour' with his father, mother, and Winifred--Brussels, the Rhine,
+Switzerland, and home by way of Paris.  Aged twenty-seven, just
+when he began to take interest in pictures, he had spent five hot
+weeks in Italy, looking into the Renaissance not so much in it as
+he had been led to expect--and a fortnight in Paris on his way
+back, looking into himself, as became a Forsyte surrounded by
+people so strongly self-centred and 'foreign' as the French.  His
+knowledge of their language being derived from his public school,
+he did not understand them when they spoke.  Silence he had found
+better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself.  He had
+disliked the look of the men's clothes, the closed-in cabs, the
+theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which smelled
+of beeswax.  He was too cautious and too shy to explore that side
+of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its attraction under
+the rose; and as for a collector's bargain--not one to be had!  As
+Nicholas might have put it--they were a grasping lot.  He had come
+back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.
+
+When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his
+third attempt on the centre of civilisation.  This time, however,
+the mountain was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply
+civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really was.  Moreover, he had
+a definite objective.  This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of
+taste and immorality, but the prosecution of his own legitimate
+affairs.  He went, indeed, because things were getting past a joke.
+The watch went on and on, and--nothing--nothing!  Jolyon had never
+returned to Paris, and no one else was 'suspect!'  Busy with new
+and very confidential matters, Soames was realising more than ever
+how essential reputation is to a solicitor.  But at night and in
+his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time was
+always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as much 'in
+irons' as ever.  Since Mafeking night he had become aware that a
+'young fool of a doctor' was hanging round Annette.  Twice he had
+come across him--a cheerful young fool, not more than thirty.
+
+Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness--an indecent,
+extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts.  The
+mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture;
+and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she
+was being shadowed: It was this which finally decided him to go and
+see for himself; to go and once more try to break down her
+repugnance, her refusal to make her own and his path comparatively
+smooth once more.  If he failed again--well, he would see what she
+did with herself, anyway!
+
+He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to
+Forsytes, where practically nobody spoke French.  He had formed no
+plan.  He did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she
+had no chance to evade him by flight.  And next morning he set out
+in bright weather.
+
+Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which
+almost annoyed Soames.  He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a
+little sideways in real curiosity.  He desired now to understand
+things French.  Was not Annette French?  There was much to be got
+out of his visit, if he could only get it.  In this laudable mood
+and the Place de la Concorde he was nearly run down three times.
+He came on the 'Cours la Reine,' where Irene's hotel was situated,
+almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed on his procedure.
+Crossing over to the river side, he noted the building, white and
+cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen through a screen of
+plane-tree leaves.  And, conscious that it would be far better to
+meet her casually in some open place than to risk a call, he sat
+down on a bench whence he could watch the entrance.  It was not
+quite eleven o'clock, and improbable that she had yet gone out.
+Some pigeons were strutting and preening their feathers in the
+pools of sunlight between the shadows of the plane-trees.  A
+workman in a blue blouse passed, and threw them crumbs from the
+paper which contained his dinner.  A 'bonne' coiffed with ribbon
+shepherded two little girls with pig-tails and frilled drawers.  A
+cab meandered by, whose cocher wore a blue coat and a black-glazed
+hat.  To Soames a kind of affectation seemed to cling about it all,
+a sort of picturesqueness which was out of date.  A theatrical
+people, the French!  He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a
+sense of injury that Fate should be casting his life into out-
+landish waters.  He shouldn't wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this
+foreign life; she had never been properly English--even to look at!
+And he began considering which of those windows could be hers under
+the green sunblinds.  How could he word what he had come to say so
+that it might pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy?  He threw
+the fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: 'I
+can't stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs.  Better give it up
+and call on her in the late afternoon.'  But he still sat on, heard
+twelve strike, and then half-past.  'I'll wait till one,' he
+thought, 'while I'm about it.'  But just then he started up, and
+shrinkingly sat down again.  A woman had come out in a cream-
+coloured frock, and was moving away under a fawn-coloured parasol.
+Irene herself!  He waited till she was too far away to recognise
+him, then set out after her.  She was strolling as though she had
+no particular objective; moving, if he remembered rightly, toward
+the Bois de Boulogne.  For half an hour at least he kept his
+distance on the far side of the way till she had passed into the
+Bois itself.  Was she going to meet someone after all?  Some
+confounded Frenchman--one of those 'Bel Ami' chaps, perhaps, who
+had nothing to do but hang about women--for he had read that book
+with difficulty and a sort of disgusted fascination.  He followed
+doggedly along a shady alley, losing sight of her now and then when
+the path curved.  And it came back to him how, long ago, one night
+in Hyde Park he had slid and sneaked from tree to tree, from seat
+to seat, hunting blindly, ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her
+and young Bosinney.  The path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came
+on her sitting in front of a small fountain--a little green-bronze
+Niobe veiled in hair to her slender hips, gazing at the pool she
+had wept: He came on her so suddenly that he was past before he
+could turn and take off his hat.  She did not start up.  She had
+always had great self-command--it was one of the things he most
+admired in her, one of his greatest grievances against her, because
+he had never been able to tell what she was thinking.  Had she
+realised that he was following?  Her self-possession made him
+angry; and, disdaining to explain his presence, he pointed to the
+mournful little Niobe, and said:
+
+"That's rather a good thing."
+
+He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her
+composure.
+
+"I didn't want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A little lonely."  As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to
+look at the fountain and passed on.
+
+Irene's eyes followed her.
+
+"No," she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, "never
+lonely.  One has always one's shadow."
+
+Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, it's your own fault.  You can be free of it at any moment.
+Irene, come back to me, and be free."
+
+Irene laughed.
+
+"Don't!" cried Soames, stamping his foot; "it's inhuman.  Listen!
+Is there any condition I can make which will bring you back to me?
+If I promise you a separate house--and just a visit now and then?"
+
+Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.
+
+"None!  None!  None!  You may hunt me to the grave.  I will not
+come."
+
+Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.
+
+"Don't make a scene!" he said sharply.  And they both stood
+motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the
+sunlight was burnishing.
+
+"That's your last word, then," muttered Soames, clenching his
+hands; "you condemn us both."
+
+Irene bent her head.  "I can't come back.  Good-bye!"
+
+A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.
+
+"Stop!" he said, "and listen to me a moment.  You gave me a sacred
+vow--you came to me without a penny.  You had all I could give you.
+You broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you
+refused me a child; you've left me in prison; you--you still move
+me so that I want you--I want you.  Well, what do you think of
+yourself?"
+
+Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.
+
+"God made me as I am," she said; "wicked if you like--but not so
+wicked that I'll give myself again to a man I hate."
+
+The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to
+lay a caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.
+
+Soames could neither speak nor move.  That word 'hate'--so extreme,
+so primitive--made all the Forsyte in him tremble.  With a deep
+imprecation he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran
+almost into the arms of the lady sauntering back--the fool, the
+shadowing fool!
+
+He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the Bois.
+
+'Well,' he thought, 'I need have no consideration for her now; she
+has not a grain of it for me.  I'll show her this very day that
+she's my wife still.'
+
+But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion
+that he did not know what he meant.  One could not make scenes in
+public, and short of scenes in public what was there he could do?
+He almost cursed his own thin-skinnedness.  She might deserve no
+consideration; but he--alas! deserved some at his own hands.  And
+sitting lunchless in the hall of his hotel, with tourists passing
+every moment, Baedeker in hand, he was visited by black dejection.
+In irons!  His whole life, with every natural instinct and every
+decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all because Fate had
+driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon this woman--so
+utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set on any other!
+Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for seeing in her
+anything but the cruel Venus she was!  And yet, still seeing her
+with the sunlight on the clinging China crepe of her gown, he
+uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was passing, thought:
+'Man in pain!  Let's see! what did I have for lunch?'
+
+Later, in front of a cafe near the Opera, over a glass of cold tea
+with lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious resolution to
+go and dine at her hotel.  If she were there, he would speak to
+her; if she were not, he would leave a note.  He dressed carefully,
+and wrote as follows:
+
+"Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all
+events.  If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone
+unturned to make things unbearable for him.  'S. F.'"
+
+He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the
+maiden name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word
+Forsyte on the envelope lest she should tear it up unread.  Then he
+went out, and made his way through the glowing streets, abandoned
+to evening pleasure-seekers.  Entering her hotel, he took his seat
+in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could see all
+entrances and exits.  She was not there.  He ate little, quickly,
+watchfully.  She did not come.  He lingered in the lounge over his
+coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy.  But still she did not come.
+He went over to the keyboard and examined the names.  Number
+twelve, on the first floor!  And he determined to take the note up
+himself.  He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little salon;
+eight-ten-twelve!  Should he knock, push the note under, or....?
+He looked furtively round and turned the handle.  The door opened,
+but into a little space leading to another door; he knocked on
+that--no answer.  The door was locked.  It fitted very closely to
+the floor; the note would not go under.  He thrust it back into his
+pocket, and stood a moment listening.  He felt somehow certain that
+she was not there.  And suddenly he came away, passing the little
+salon down the stairs.  He stopped at the bureau and said:
+
+"Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?"
+
+"Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur--suddenly, about three o'clock.
+There was illness in her family."
+
+Soames compressed his lips.  "Oh!" he said; "do you know her
+address?"
+
+"Non, Monsieur.  England, I think."
+
+Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out.  He hailed
+an open horse-cab which was passing.
+
+"Drive me anywhere!"
+
+The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved his
+whip.  And Soames was borne along in that little yellow-wheeled
+Victoria all over star-shaped Paris, with here and there a pause,
+and the question, "C'est par ici, Monsieur?" "No, go on," till the
+man gave it up in despair, and the yellow-wheeled chariot continued
+to roll between the tall, flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-
+tree avenues--a little Flying Dutchman of a cab.
+
+'Like my life,' thought Soames, 'without object, on and on!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN THE WEB
+
+
+Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third
+morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and
+carried a brown billycock hat.  Soames motioned him to a seat.
+
+"The news from the war is not so bad, is it?" said Mr. Polteed.  "I
+hope I see you well, sir."
+
+"Thanks! quite."
+
+Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into
+it, and said softly:
+
+"I think we've done your business for you at last."
+
+"What?" ejaculated Soames.
+
+"Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be justified
+in calling conclusive evidence," and Mr. Polteed paused.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17 and
+a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him coming
+out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o'clock in the evening.
+With a little care in the giving of the evidence that will be
+enough, especially as 17 has left Paris--no doubt with the party in
+question.  In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven't got on to
+them again, yet; but we shall--we shall.  She's worked hard under
+very difficult circumstances, and I'm glad she's brought it off at
+last."  Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped its end against
+the table, looked at Soames, and put it back.  The expression on
+his client's face was not encouraging.
+
+"Who is this new person?" said Soames abruptly.
+
+"That we don't know.  She'll swear to the fact, and she's got his
+appearance pat."
+
+Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:
+
+"'Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening
+dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat cheeks,
+good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....'"
+
+Soames rose and went to the window.  He stood there in sardonic
+fury.  Congenital idiot--spidery congenital idiot!  Seven months at
+fifteen pounds a week--to be tracked down as his own wife's lover!
+Guilty look!  He threw the window open.
+
+"It's hot," he said, and came back to his seat:
+
+Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.
+
+"I doubt if that's quite good enough," he said, drawling the words,
+"with no name or address.  I think you may let that lady have a
+rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end."  Whether Polteed had
+spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental vision of him in
+the midst of his cronies dissolved in inextinguishable laughter.
+'Guilty look!'  Damnation!
+
+Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: "I assure
+you we have put it through sometimes on less than that.  It's
+Paris, you know.  Attractive woman living alone.  Why not risk it,
+sir?  We might screw it up a peg."
+
+Soames had sudden insight.  The fellow's professional zeal was
+stirred: 'Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce
+through a visit to his own wife's bedroom!  Something to talk of
+there, when I retire!'  And for one wild moment he thought: 'Why
+not?'  After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet
+and a guilty look!
+
+"I'm not authorised to take any risk!" he said shortly.
+
+Mr. Polteed looked up.
+
+"Pity," he said, "quite a pity!  That other affair seemed very
+costive."
+
+Soames rose.
+
+"Never mind that.  Please watch 47, and take care not to find a
+mare's nest.  Good-morning!"
+
+Mr. Polteed's eye glinted at the words 'mare's nest!'
+
+"Very good.  You shall be kept informed."
+
+And Soames was alone again.  The spidery, dirty, ridiculous
+business!  Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on
+them.  Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk
+roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares, very
+desirable, in Manifold and Topping's.  That afternoon he left work
+early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne.  Only Madame
+Lamotte was in.  Would Monsieur have tea with her?
+
+Soames bowed.
+
+When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little
+room, he said abruptly
+
+"I want a talk with you, Madame."
+
+The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long
+expected such words.
+
+"I have to ask you something first: That young doctor--what's his
+name?  Is there anything between him and Annette?"
+
+Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet--clear-cut,
+black, hard, shining.
+
+"Annette is young," she said; "so is monsieur le docteur.  Between
+young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good daughter.
+Ah! what a jewel of a nature!"
+
+The least little smile twisted Soames' lips.
+
+"Nothing definite, then?"
+
+"But definite--no, indeed!  The young man is veree nice, but--what
+would you?  There is no money at present."
+
+She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same.
+Their eyes met.
+
+"I am a married man," he said, "living apart from my wife for many
+years.  I am seeking to divorce her."
+
+Madame Lamotte put down her cup.  Indeed!  What tragic things there
+were!  The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer
+species of contempt in Soames.
+
+"I am a rich man," he added, fully conscious that the remark was
+not in good taste.  "It is useless to say more at present, but I
+think you understand."
+
+Madame's eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked at
+him very straight.
+
+"Ah! ca--mais nous avons le temps!" was all she said.  "Another
+little cup?" Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked
+westward.
+
+He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit
+herself with that cheerful young ass until....!  But what chance of
+his ever being able to say: 'I'm free.'  What chance?  The future
+had lost all semblance of reality.  He felt like a fly, entangled
+in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air with
+pitiful eyes.
+
+He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens,
+and down Queen's Gate towards Chelsea.  Perhaps she had gone back
+to her flat.  That at all events he could find out.  For since that
+last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had
+taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover.  He
+arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour.  No need to
+enquire!  A grey-haired lady was watering the flower-boxes in her
+window.  It was evidently let.  And he walked slowly past again,
+along the river--an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony and
+comfort, except within his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+RICHMOND PARK
+
+
+On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was
+received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:
+
+"Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again."
+
+It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure
+of June, whose berth was booked for the following day.  She was,
+indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to her
+father's care when the message arrived.
+
+The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus of
+Jolly's enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation
+and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails their
+individual liberties.  Enthusiastic at first about the
+'wonderfulness' of the work, she had begun after a month to feel
+that she could train herself so much better than others could train
+her.  And if Holly had not insisted on following her example, and
+being trained too, she must inevitably have 'cried off.'  The
+departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April had further
+stiffened her failing resolve.  But now, on the point of departure,
+the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two children,
+adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed on her
+so that she was still in danger of backing out.  The reading of
+that cablegram, with its disquieting reality, clinched the matter.
+She saw herself already nursing Jolly--for of course they would let
+her nurse her own brother!  Jolyon--ever wide and doubtful--had no
+such hope.  Poor June!
+
+Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal life
+was?  Ever since he knew of his boy's arrival at Cape Town the
+thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon.  He
+could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger
+all the time.  The cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a
+relief.  He was now safe from bullets, anyway.  And yet--this
+enteric was a virulent disease!  The Times was full of deaths
+therefrom.  Why could he not be lying out there in that up-country
+hospital, and his boy safe at home?  The un-Forsytean selfsacrifice
+of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered Jolyon.  He
+would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his boy;
+but no such personal motive was influencing them.  He could only
+think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.
+
+Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree.
+She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital
+training away from home.  And, seeing her approach, he thought:
+'She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom.
+Thank God she isn't going out.'  She had seated herself in the
+swing, very silent and still.  'She feels this,' thought Jolyon,
+'as much as I' and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: "Don't
+take it to heart too much, my child.  If he weren't ill, he might
+be in much greater danger."
+
+Holly got out of the swing.
+
+"I want to tell you something, Dad.  It was through me that Jolly
+enlisted and went out."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love.  We
+used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged.  Jolly found it out,
+and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.  It was
+all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too.  Because if anything
+happens to either of them I should feel awful.  Besides, I'm just
+as much trained as June."
+
+Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony.
+So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself;
+and his three children were Forsytes after all.  Surely Holly might
+have told him all this before!  But he smothered the sarcastic
+sayings on his lips.  Tenderness to the young was perhaps the most
+sacred article of his belief.  He had got, no doubt, what he
+deserved.  Engaged!  So this was why he had so lost touch with her!
+And to young Val Dartie--nephew of Soames--in the other camp!  It
+was all terribly distasteful.  He closed his easel, and set his
+drawing against the tree.
+
+"Have you told June?"
+
+"Yes; she says she'll get me into her cabin somehow.  It's a single
+cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor.  If you consent,
+she'll go up now and get permission."
+
+'Consent?' thought Jolyon.  'Rather late in the day to ask for
+that!'  But again he checked himself.
+
+"You're too young, my dear; they won't let you."
+
+"June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town.  If
+they won't let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on
+training there.  Let me go, Dad!"
+
+Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.
+
+"I never stop anyone from doing anything," he said.
+
+Holly flung her arms round his neck.
+
+"Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world."
+
+'That means the worst,' thought Jolyon.  If he had ever doubted his
+creed of tolerance he did so then.
+
+"I'm not friendly with Val's family," he said, "and I don't know
+Val, but Jolly didn't like him."
+
+Holly looked at the distance and said:
+
+"I love him."
+
+"That settles it," said Jolyon dryly, then catching the expression
+on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: 'Is anything more
+pathetic than the faith of the young?' Unless he actually forbade
+her going it was obvious that he must make the best of it, so he
+went up to town with June.  Whether due to her persistence, or the
+fact that the official they saw was an old school friend of
+Jolyon's, they obtained permission for Holly to share the single
+cabin.  He took them to Surbiton station the following evening, and
+they duly slid away from him, provided with money, invalid foods,
+and those letters of credit without which Forsytes do not travel.
+
+He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late
+dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him
+that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show
+them that he appreciated their sympathy.  But it was a real relief
+to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones--cunningly chosen
+by young Bosinney for shape and colour--with night closing in
+around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the trees,
+and smelling so sweet that it made him ache.  The grass was
+drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down,
+till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three,
+not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
+father was always nearest to the house, and his son always nearest
+to the terrace edge.  Each had an arm lightly within his arm; he
+dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should disturb them,
+and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it dropped from his
+lips, at last, which were getting hot.  They left him then, and his
+arms felt chilly.  Three Jolyons in one Jolyon they had walked.
+
+He stood still, counting the sounds--a carriage passing on the
+highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage's farm, the whispering
+trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle.  A multitude of
+stars up there--bright and silent, so far off!  No moon as yet!
+Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the iris
+flowers along the terrace edge--his favourite flower that had the
+night's own colour on its curving crumpled petals.  He turned round
+to the house.  Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to live in
+all that part of it.  Stark loneliness!  He could not go on living
+here alone.  And yet, so long as there was beauty, why should a man
+feel lonely?  The answer--as to some idiot's riddle--was: Because
+he did.  The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for at
+the back of beauty was harmony, and at the back of harmony was--
+union.  Beauty could not comfort if the soul were out of it.  The
+night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of grapes on it in starshine,
+and the breath of grass and honey coming from it, he could not
+enjoy, while she who was to him the life of beauty, its embodiment
+and essence, was cut off from him, utterly cut off now, he felt, by
+honourable decency.
+
+He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that
+resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their
+own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers.  But after
+dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.
+
+He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains--high as the
+very stars--stretching in a semi--circle from footlights to
+footlights.  He himself was very small, a little black restless
+figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not
+altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only
+experiencing but watching.  This figure of himself and Soames was
+trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and
+dark, kept him in.  Several times he had crossed in front of them
+before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift--a tall chink of
+beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise,
+remote, ineffable.  Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he
+found the curtains closing before him.  Bitterly disappointed he--
+or was it Soames?--moved on, and there was the chink again through
+the parted curtains, which again closed too soon.  This went on and
+on and he never got through till he woke with the word "Irene" on
+his lips.  The dream disturbed him badly, especially that
+identification of himself with Soames.
+
+Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours riding
+Jolly's horse in search of fatigue.  And on the second day he made
+up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get
+permission to follow his daughters to South Africa.  He had just
+begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:
+
+
+"GREEN HOTEL,
+"June 13.
+" RICHMOND.
+
+"MY DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"You will be surprised to see how near I am to you.  Paris became
+impossible--and I have come here to be within reach of your advice.
+I would so love to see you again.  Since you left Paris I don't
+think I have met anyone I could really talk to.  Is all well with
+you and with your boy?  No one knows, I think, that I am here at
+present.
+
+"Always your friend,
+
+"IRENE."
+
+
+Irene within three miles of him!--and again in flight!  He stood
+with a very queer smile on his lips.  This was more than he had
+bargained for!
+
+About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he went
+along, he thought: 'Richmond Park!  By Jove, it suits us Forsytes!'
+Not that Forsytes lived there--nobody lived there save royalty,
+rangers, and the deer--but in Richmond Park Nature was allowed to
+go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of being natural,
+seeming to say: 'Look at my instincts--they are almost passions,
+very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of course; the very hub of
+possession is to possess oneself.'  Yes! Richmond Park possessed
+itself, even on that bright day of June, with arrowy cuckoos
+shifting the tree-points of their calls, and the wood doves
+announcing high summer.
+
+The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o'clock, stood nearly
+opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was
+modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry
+tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost
+always standing before the door.
+
+In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion,
+Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work,
+playing 'Hansel and Gretel' out of an old score.  Above her on a
+wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony,
+amongst deer-hounds, Scotch. caps, and slain stags; beside her in a
+pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia.  The
+Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock
+Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the
+past century.
+
+"If the proprietor had eyes," he said, "he would show you the door;
+you have broken through his decorations."  Thus lightly he
+smothered up an emotional moment.  Having eaten cold beef, pickled
+walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they
+walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence
+Jolyon had dreaded.
+
+"You haven't told me about Paris," he said at last.
+
+"No.  I've been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that.
+But then Soames came.  By the little Niobe--the same story; would I
+go back to him?"
+
+"Incredible!"
+
+She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now.
+Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: 'I
+have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.'
+
+For sheer emotional intensity had he ever--old as he was--passed
+through such a moment?
+
+The words: 'Irene, I adore you!' almost escaped him.  Then, with a
+clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision
+capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white
+wall.
+
+"My boy is very ill out there," he said quietly.
+
+Irene slipped her arm through his.
+
+"Let's walk on; I understand."
+
+No miserable explanation to attempt!  She had understood!  And they
+walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the
+rabbitholes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly.  He left her two
+hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.
+
+'She knows of my feeling for her, then,' he thought.  Of course!
+One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OVER THE RIVER
+
+
+Jolly was tired to death of dreams.  They had left him now too wan
+and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly
+remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze
+through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running by
+in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond.  He
+knew what the Karoo was now, even if he had not seen a Boer roll
+over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of flying bullets.  This
+pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled powder.  A
+thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit--who knew?
+Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil thing its
+victory--just enough to know that there were many lying here with
+him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch
+that thread of river and be able to remember faintly those far-away
+things....
+
+The sun was nearly down.  It would be cooler soon.  He would have
+liked to know the time--to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth, to
+hear the repeater strike.  It would have been friendly, home-like.
+He had not even strength to remember that the old watch was last
+wound the day he began to lie here.  The pulse of his brain beat so
+feebly that faces which came and went, nurse's, doctor's,
+orderly's, were indistinguishable, just one indifferent face; and
+the words spoken about him meant all the same thing, and that
+almost nothing.  Those things he used to do, though far and faint,
+were more distinct--walking past the foot of the old steps at
+Harrow 'bill'--'Here, sir!  Here, sir!'--wrapping boots in the
+Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining boots--grandfather
+coming from somewhere dark--a smell of earth--the mushroom house!
+Robin Hill!  Burying poor old Balthasar in the leaves!  Dad!
+Home....
+
+Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no water
+in it--someone was speaking too.  Want anything?  No.  What could
+one want?  Too weak to want--only to hear his watch strike....
+
+Holly!  She wouldn't bowl properly.  Oh!  Pitch them up!  Not
+sneaks!...  'Back her, Two and Bow!'  He was Two!...  Consciousness
+came once more with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a
+rising blood-red crescent moon.  His eyes rested on it fascinated;
+in the long minutes of brain-nothingness it went moving up and
+up....
+
+"He's going, doctor!"   Not pack boots again?  Never?  'Mind your
+form, Two!'  Don't cry!  Go quietly-over the river--sleep!...
+Dark?  If somebody would--strike--his--watch!...
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOAMES ACTS
+
+
+A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained unopened
+in Soames' pocket throughout two hours of sustained attention to
+the affairs of the 'New Colliery Company,' which, declining almost
+from the moment of old Jolyon's retirement from the Chairmanship,
+had lately run down so fast that there was now nothing for it but a
+'winding-up.'  He took the letter out to lunch at his City Club,
+sacred to him for the meals he had eaten there with his father in
+the early seventies, when James used to like him to come and see
+far himself the nature of his future life.
+
+Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed
+potato, he read:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+"In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the matter
+up at the other end with gratifying results.  Observation of 47 has
+enabled us to locate 17 at the Green Hotel, Richmond.  The two have
+been observed to meet daily during the past week in Richmond Park.
+Nothing absolutely crucial has so far been notified.  But in
+conjunction with what we had from Paris at the beginning of the
+year, I am confident we could now satisfy the Court.  We shall, of
+course, continue to watch the matter until we hear from you.
+
+"Very faithfully yours,
+
+"CLAUD POLTEED."
+
+
+Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:
+
+"Take this away; it's cold."
+
+"Shall I bring you some more, sir?"
+
+"No.  Get me some coffee in the other room."
+
+And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two
+acquaintances without sign of recognition.
+
+'Satisfy the Court!' he thought, sitting at a little round marble
+table with the coffee before him.  That fellow Jolyon!  He poured
+out his coffee, sweetened and drank it.  He would disgrace him in
+the eyes of his own children!  And rising, with that resolution hot
+within him, he found for the first time the inconvenience of being
+his own solicitor.  He could not treat this scandalous matter in
+his own office.  He must commit the soul of his private dignity to
+a stranger, some other professional dealer in family dishonour.
+Who was there he could go to?  Linkman and Laver in Budge Row,
+perhaps--reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding acquaintances.
+But before he saw them he must see Polteed again.  But at this
+thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness.  To part with his
+secret?  How find the words?  How subject himself to contempt and
+secret laughter?  Yet, after all, the fellow knew already--oh yes,
+he knew!  And, feeling that he must finish with it now, he took a
+cab into the West End.
+
+In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed's room was positively
+open, and the only precaution was a wire gauze, preventing the
+intrusion of flies.  Two or three had tried to come in, and been
+caught, so that they seemed to be clinging there with the intention
+of being devoured presently.  Mr. Polteed, following the direction
+of his client's eye, rose apologetically and closed the window.
+
+'Posing ass!'  thought Soames.  Like all who fundamentally believe
+in themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little
+sideway smile, he said: "I've had your letter.  I'm going to act.
+I suppose you know who the lady you've been watching really is?"
+Mr. Polteed's expression at that moment was a masterpiece.  It so
+clearly said: 'Well, what do you think?  But mere professional
+knowledge, I assure you--pray forgive it!'  He made a little half
+airy movement with his hand, as who should say: 'Such things--such
+things will happen to us all!'
+
+"Very well, then," said Soames, moistening his lips: "there's no
+need to say more.  I'm instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row
+to act for me.  I don't want to hear your evidence, but kindly make
+your report to them at five o'clock, and continue to observe the
+utmost secrecy."
+
+Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once.  "My
+dear sir," he said.
+
+"Are you convinced," asked Soames with sudden energy, "that there
+is enough?"
+
+The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed's shoulders.
+
+"You can risk it," he murmured; "with what we have, and human
+nature, you can risk it."
+
+Soames rose.  "You will ask for Mr. Linkman.  Thanks; don't get
+up."  He could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him
+and the door.  In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his forehead.
+This had been the worst of it--he could stand the strangers better.
+And he went back into the City to do what still lay before him.
+
+That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was
+overwhelmed by his old longing for a son--a son, to watch him eat
+as he went down the years, to be taken on his knee as James on a
+time had been wont to take him; a son of his own begetting, who
+could understand him because he was the same flesh and blood--
+understand, and comfort him, and become more rich and cultured than
+himself because he would start even better off.  To get old--like
+that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there--and be quite alone
+with possessions heaping up around him; to take no interest in
+anything because it had no future and must pass away from him to
+hands and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot!  No!  He would
+force it through now, and  be free to marry, and have a son to care
+for him before he grew to be like the old old man his father,
+wistfully watching now his sweetbread, now his son.
+
+In that mood he went up to bed.  But, lying warm between those fine
+linen sheets of Emily's providing, he was visited by memories and
+torture.  Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling of her body,
+beset him.  Why had he ever been fool enough to see her again, and
+let this flood back on him so that it was pain to think of her with
+that fellow--that stealing fellow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A SUMMER DAY
+
+
+His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon's mind in the days which
+followed the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park.  No further
+news had come; enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor
+could he expect to hear from June and Holly for three weeks at
+least.  In these days he felt how insufficient were his memories of
+Jolly, and what an amateur of a father he had been.  There was not
+a single memory in which anger played a part; not one
+reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one
+heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly's mother died.
+Nothing but half-ironical affection.  He had been too afraid of
+committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his
+liberty, or interfering with that of his boy.
+
+Only in Irene's presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
+ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his
+son.  With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and
+social creed of which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again
+during his boy's public school and varsity life--all that sense of
+not going back on what father and son expected of each other.  With
+Irene was bound up all his delight in beauty and in Nature.  And he
+seemed to know less and less which was the stronger within him.
+>From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely awakened, however,
+one afternoon, just as he was starting off to Richmond, by a young
+man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who came forward
+faintly smiling.
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte?  Thank you!"   Placing an envelope in Jolyon's
+hand he wheeled off the path and rode away.  Bewildered, Jolyon
+opened it.
+
+"Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte!"
+
+A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant
+reaction 'Why, here's the very thing you want, and you don't like
+it!'  But she must have had one too; and he must go to her at once.
+He turned things over as he went along.  It was an ironical busi-
+ness.  For, whatever the Scriptures said about the heart, it took
+more than mere longings to satisfy the law.  They could perfectly
+well defend this suit, or at least in good faith try to.  But the
+idea of doing so revolted Jolyon.  If not her lover in deed he was
+in desire, and he knew that she was ready to come to him.  Her face
+had told him so.  Not that he exaggerated her feeling for him.  She
+had had her grand passion, and he could not expect another from her
+at his age.  But she had trust in him, affection for him, and must
+feel that he would be a refuge.  Surely she would not ask him to
+defend the suit, knowing that he adored her!  Thank Heaven she had
+not that maddening British conscientiousness which refused
+happiness for the sake of refusing!  She must rejoice at this
+chance of being free after seventeen years of death in life!  As to
+publicity, the fat was in the fire!  To defend the suit would not
+take away the slur.  Jolyon had all the proper feeling of a Forsyte
+whose privacy is threatened: If he was to be  hung by the Law, by
+all means let it be for a sheep!  Moreover the notion of standing
+in a witness box and swearing to the truth that no gesture, not
+even a word of love had passed between them seemed to him more
+degrading than to take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer--more
+truly degrading, considering the feeling in his heart, and just as
+bad and painful for his children.  The thought of explaining away,
+if he could, before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their
+meetings in Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him.
+The brutality and hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process;
+the probability that they would not be believed--the mere vision of
+her, whom he looked on as the embodiment of Nature and of Beauty,
+standing there before all those suspicious, gloating eyes was
+hideous to him.  No, no!  To defend a suit only made a London
+holiday, and sold the newspapers.  A thousand times better accept
+what Soames and the gods had sent!
+
+'Besides,' he thought honestly, 'who knows whether, even for my
+boy's sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer?
+Anyway, her neck will be out of chancery at last!'  Thus absorbed,
+he was hardly conscious of the heavy heat.  The sky had become
+overcast, purplish with little streaks of white.  A heavy heat-drop
+plashed a little star pattern in the dust of the road as he entered
+the Park.  'Phew!'  he thought, 'thunder!  I hope she's not come to
+meet me; there's a ducking up there!'  But at that very minute he
+saw Irene coming towards the Gate.  'We must scuttle back to Robin
+Hill,' he thought.
+
+The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o'clock, bringing
+welcome distraction to the clerks in every office.  Soames was
+drinking a cup of tea when a note was brought in to him:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+"Forsyte v.  Forsyte and Forsyte
+
+"In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you that we
+personally served the respondent and co-respondent in this suit
+to-day, at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.
+"Faithfully yours,
+
+"LINKMAN AND LAVER."
+
+
+For some minutes Soames stared at that note.  Ever since he had
+given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them.  It was
+so scandalous, such a general disgrace!  The evidence, too, what he
+had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive; somehow, he
+believed less and less that those two had gone all lengths.  But
+this, of course, would drive them to it; and he suffered from the
+thought.  That fellow to have her love, where he had failed!  Was
+it too late?  Now that they had been brought up sharp by service of
+this petition, had he not a lever with which he could force them
+apart?  'But if I don't act at once,' he thought, 'it will be too
+late, now they've had this thing.  I'll go and see him; I'll go
+down!'
+
+And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the
+'new-fangled' motor-cabs.  It might take a long time to run that
+fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come
+to after such a shock!  'If I were a theatrical ass,' he thought,
+'I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or
+something!'  He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of
+'Magentie versus Wake,' intending to read them on the way down.  He
+did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and jarred,
+unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or the smell
+of petrol.  He must be guided by the fellow's attitude; the great
+thing was to keep his head!
+
+London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared
+Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards.  What a lot
+of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in
+the great scramble!  Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames
+thought: 'I could let go if I liked!  Nothing could touch me; I
+could snap my fingers, live as I wished--enjoy myself!'  No!  One
+could not live as he had and just drop it all--settle down in
+Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made.  A man's life
+was what he possessed and sought to possess.  Only fools thought
+otherwise--fools, and socialists, and libertines!
+
+The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace.  'Fifteen miles
+an hour, I should think!' he mused; 'this'll take people out of
+town to live!' and he thought of its bearing on the portions of
+London owned by his father--he himself had never taken to that form
+of investment, the gambler in him having all the outlet needed in
+his pictures.  And the cab sped on, down the hill past Wimbledon
+Common.  This interview!  Surely a man of fifty-two with grown-up
+children, and hung on the line, would not be reckless.  'He won't
+want to disgrace the family,' he thought; 'he was as fond of his
+father as I am of mine, and they were brothers.  That woman brings
+destruction--what is it in her?  I've never known.'  The cab
+branched off, along the side of a wood, and he heard a late cuckoo
+calling, almost the first he had heard that year.  He was now
+almost opposite the site he had originally chosen for his house,
+and which had been so unceremoniously rejected by Bosinney in
+favour of his own choice.  He began passing his handkerchief over
+his face and hands, taking deep breaths to give him steadiness.
+'Keep one's head,' he thought, 'keep one's head!'
+
+The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and
+the sound of music met him.  He had forgotten the fellow's
+daughters.
+
+"I may be out again directly," he said to the driver, "or I may be
+kept some time"; and he rang the bell.
+
+Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he
+felt relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by
+June or Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with
+complete surprise he saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting in
+an armchair listening.  They both stood up.  Blood surged into
+Soames' brain, and all his resolution to be guided by this or that
+left him utterly.  The look of 'his farmer forbears--dogged
+Forsytes down by the sea, from 'Superior Dosset' back-grinned out
+of his face.
+
+"Very pretty!"   he said.
+
+He heard the fellow murmur:
+
+"This is hardly the place--we'll go to the study, if you don't
+mind."  And they both passed him through the curtain opening.  In
+the little room to which he followed them, Irene stood by the open
+window, and the 'fellow' close to her by a big chair.  Soames
+pulled the door to behind him with a slam; the sound carried him
+back all those years to the day when he had shut out Jolyon--shut
+him out for meddling with his affairs.
+
+"Well," he said, "what have you to say for yourselves?"
+
+The fellow had the effrontery to smile.
+
+"What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask.  I
+should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."
+
+"Oh!" said Soames; "you think so!  I came to tell you that I'll
+divorce her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both, unless
+you swear to keep clear of each other from now on."
+
+He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering
+and his hands twitching.  Neither of them answered; but their faces
+seemed to him as if contemptuous.
+
+"Well," he said; "you--Irene?"
+
+Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.
+
+"Let her alone!" said Soames furiously.  "Irene, will you swear
+it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! and you?"
+
+"Still less."
+
+"So then you're guilty, are you?"
+
+"Yes, guilty."  It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with
+that unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried
+beyond himself, he cried:
+
+"You are a devil"
+
+"Go out!  Leave this house, or I'll do you an injury."
+
+That fellow to talk of injuries!  Did he know how near his throat
+was to being scragged?
+
+"A trustee," he said, "embezzling trust property!  A thief,
+stealing his cousin's wife."
+
+"Call me what you like.  You have chosen your part, we have chosen
+ours.  Go out!"
+
+If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that
+moment.
+
+"I'll make you pay!" he said.
+
+"I shall be very happy."
+
+At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of
+him who had nicknamed him 'the man of property,' Soames stood
+glaring.  It was ridiculous!
+
+There they were, kept from violence by some secret force.  No blow
+possible, no words to meet the case.  But he could not, did not
+know how to turn and go away.  His eyes fastened on Irene's face--
+the last time he would ever see that fatal face--the last time, no
+doubt!
+
+"You," he said suddenly, "I hope you'll treat him as you treated
+me--that's all."
+
+He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not quite
+relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the hall, and
+got into his cab.  He lolled against the cushion with his eyes
+shut.  Never in his life had he been so near to murderous violence,
+never so thrown away the restraint which was his second nature.  He
+had a stripped and naked feeling, as if all virtue had gone out of
+him--life meaningless, mind-striking work.  Sunlight streamed in on
+him, but he felt cold.  The scene he had passed through had gone
+from him already, what was before him would not materialise, he
+could catch on to nothing; and he felt frightened, as if he had
+been hanging over the edge of a precipice, as if with another turn
+of the screw sanity would have failed him.  'I'm not fit for it,'
+he thought; 'I mustn't--I'm not fit for it.'  The cab sped on, and
+in mechanical procession trees, houses, people passed, but had no
+significance.  'I feel very queer,' he thought; 'I'll take a
+Turkish bath.--I've been very near to something.  It won't do.'
+The cab whirred its way back over the bridge, up the Fulham Road,
+along the Park.
+
+"To the Hammam," said Soames.
+
+Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so comforting!
+Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte coming out, red
+and glistening.
+
+"Hallo!" said George; "what are you training for?  You've not got
+much superfluous."
+
+Buffoon!  Soames passed him with his sideway smile.  Lying back,
+rubbing his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he
+thought: 'Let them laugh!  I won't feel anything!  I can't stand
+violence!  It's not good for me!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SUMMER NIGHT
+
+
+Soames left dead silence in the little study.  "Thank you for that
+good lie," said Jolyon suddenly.  "Come out--the air in here is not
+what it was!"
+
+In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained
+peach-trees the two walked up and down in silence.  Old Jolyon had
+planted some cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy
+terrace and the dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed
+daisies; for twelve years they had flourished, till their dark
+spiral shapes had quite a look of Italy.  Birds fluttered softly in
+the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped past, with a steel-blue
+sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass felt springy beneath
+the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased each other.
+After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was wonderfully
+poignant.  Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow strip of
+garden-bed full of mignonette and pansies, and from the bees came a
+low hum in which all other sounds were set--the mooing of a cow
+deprived of her calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an elm-tree at
+the bottom of the meadow.  Who would have thought that behind them,
+within ten miles, London began--that London of the Forsytes, with
+its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its jumbled stone isles
+of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and stucco?  That London
+which had seen Irene's early tragedy, and Jolyon's own hard days;
+that web; that princely workhouse of the possessive instinct!
+
+And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll
+treat him as you treated me.'  That would depend on himself.  Could
+he trust himself?  Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave
+of what he adored?  Could beauty be confided to him?  Or should she
+not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments
+which passed, to return only at her own choosing?  'We are a breed
+of spoilers!' thought Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life
+is not safe with us.  Let her come to me as she will, when she
+will, not at all if she will not.  Let me be just her stand-by, her
+perching-place; never-never her cage!'
+
+She was the chink of beauty in his dream.  Was he to pass through
+the curtains now and reach her?  Was the rich stuff of many
+possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct
+walling in that little black figure of himself, and Soames--was it
+to be rent so that he could pass through into his vision, find
+there something not of the senses only?  'Let me,' he thought, 'ah!
+let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!'
+
+But at dinner there were plans to be made.  To-night she would go
+back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.  He
+must instruct his solicitor--Jack Herring.  Not a finger must be
+raised to hinder the process of the Law.  Damages exemplary,
+judicial strictures, costs, what they liked--let it go through at
+the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at
+last!  To-morrow he would see Herring--they would go and see him
+together.  And then--abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about
+evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth.  He looked
+round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a
+woman was sitting there.  The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
+mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli,
+had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women--
+this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair,
+her lips, and in her eyes.
+
+'And this is to be mine!'  he thought.  'It frightens me!'
+
+After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee.  They
+sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer
+night come very slowly on.  It was still warm and the air smelled
+of lime blossom--early this summer.  Two bats were flighting with
+the faint mysterious little noise they make.  He had placed the
+chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit
+the discreet light in there.  There was no wind, and not a whisper
+in the old oak-tree twenty yards away!  The moon rose from behind
+the copse, nearly full; and the two lights struggled, till
+moonlight conquered, changing the colour and quality of all the
+garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their feet,
+climbing up, changing their faces.
+
+"Well," said Jolyon at last, "you'll be tired, dear; we'd better
+start.  The maid will show you Holly's room," and he rang the study
+bell.  The maid who came handed him a telegram.  Watching her take
+Irene away, he thought: 'This must have come an hour or more ago,
+and she didn't bring it out to us!  That shows!  Well, we'll be
+hung for a sheep soon!'  And, opening the telegram, he read:
+
+
+"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on
+June 20th.  Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.
+
+
+He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless.  The moon shone in on
+him; a moth flew in his face.  The first day of all that he had not
+thought almost ceaselessly of Jolly.  He went blindly towards the
+window, struck against the old armchair--his father's--and sank
+down on to the arm of it.  He sat there huddled' forward, staring
+into the night.  Gone out like a candle flame; far from home, from
+love, all by himself, in the dark!  His boy!  From a little chap
+always so good to him--so friendly!  Twenty years old, and cut down
+like grass--to have no life at all!  'I didn't really know him,' he
+thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved each other.  It's
+only love that matters.'
+
+To die out there--lonely--wanting them--wanting home!  This seemed
+to his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself.
+No shelter, no protection, no love at the last!  And all the deeply
+rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential clinging
+to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon
+was so strong in all the Forsytes--felt outraged, cut, and torn by
+his boy's lonely passing.  Better far if he had died in battle,
+without time to long for them to come to him, to call out for them,
+perhaps, in his delirium!
+
+The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with
+uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him--the oak-tree his boy
+had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and
+hurt himself, and hadn't cried!
+
+The door creaked.  He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and
+read it.  He heard the faint rustle of her dress.  She sank on her
+knees close to him, and he forced himself to smile at her.  She
+stretched up her arms and drew his head down on her shoulder.  The
+perfume and warmth of her encircled him; her presence gained slowly
+his whole being.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JAMES IN WAITING
+
+
+Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his face
+toward Park Lane.  His father had been unwell lately.  This would
+have to be kept from him!  Never till that moment had he realised
+how much the dread of bringing James' grey hairs down with sorrow
+to the grave had counted with him; how intimately it was bound up
+with his own shrinking from scandal.  His affection for his father,
+always deep, had increased of late years with the knowledge that
+James looked on him as the real prop of his decline.  It seemed
+pitiful that one who had been so careful all his life and done so
+much for the family name--so that it was almost a byword for solid,
+wealthy respectability--should at his last gasp have to see it in
+all the newspapers.  This was like lending a hand to Death, that
+final enemy of Forsytes.  'I must tell mother,' he thought, 'and
+when it comes on, we must keep the papers from him somehow.  He
+sees hardly anyone.'  Letting himself in with his latchkey, he was
+beginning to ascend he stairs when he became conscious of commotion
+on the second-floor landing.  His mother's voice was saying:
+
+"Now, James, you'll catch cold.  Why can't you wait quietly?"
+
+His father's answering
+
+"Wait?  I'm always waiting.  Why doesn't he come in?"
+
+"You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy of
+yourself on the landing."
+
+"He'll go up to bed, I shouldn't wonder.  I shan't sleep."
+
+"Now come back to bed, James."
+
+"Um!  I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell."
+
+"You shan't have to wait till to-morrow morning; I'll go down and
+bring him up.  Don't fuss!"
+
+"There you go--always so cock-a-hoop.  He mayn't come in at all."
+
+"Well, if he doesn't come in you won't catch him by standing out
+here in your dressing-gown."
+
+Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father's tall
+figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over the
+balustrade above.  Light fell on his silvery hair and whiskers,
+investing his head with, a sort of halo.
+
+"Here he is!" he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured,
+and his mother's comfortable answer from the bedroom door:
+
+"That's all right.  Come in, and I'll brush your hair."  James
+extended a thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a
+skeleton, and passed through the doorway of his bedroom.
+
+'What is it?' thought Soames.  'What has he got hold of now?'
+
+His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the
+mirror, while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes through
+and through his hair.  She would do this several times a day, for
+it had on him something of the effect produced on a cat by
+scratching between its ears.
+
+"There you are!" he said.  "I've been waiting."
+
+Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
+examined the mark on it.
+
+"Well," he said, "you're looking better."
+
+James shook his head.
+
+"I want to say something.  Your mother hasn't heard."  He announced
+Emily's ignorance of what he hadn't told her, as if it were a
+grievance.
+
+"Your father's been in a great state all the evening.  I'm sure I
+don't know what about."
+
+The faint 'whisk-whisk' of the brushes continued the soothing of
+her voice.
+
+"No! you know nothing," said James.  "Soames can tell me."  And,
+fixing his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain,
+uncomfortable to watch, on his son, he muttered:
+
+"I'm getting on, Soames.  At my age I can't tell.  I might die any
+time.  There'll be a lot of money.  There's Rachel and Cicely got
+no children; and Val's out there--that chap his father will get
+hold of all he can.  And somebody'll pick up Imogen, I shouldn't
+wonder."
+
+Soames listened vaguely--he had heard all this before.  Whish-
+whish!  went the brushes.
+
+"If that's all!"   said Emily.
+
+"All!" cried James; "it's nothing.  I'm coming to that."  And again
+his eyes strained pitifully at Soames.
+
+"It's you, my boy," he said suddenly; "you ought to get a divorce."
+
+That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for Soames'
+composure.  His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on the
+buttonhook, and as if in apology James hurried on:
+
+"I don't know what's become of her--they say she's abroad.  Your
+Uncle Swithin used to admire her--he was a funny fellow."  (So he
+always alluded to his dead twin-'The Stout and the Lean of it,'
+they had been called.)  "She wouldn't be alone, I should say."  And
+with that summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he
+was silent, watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird's.
+Soames, too, was silent.  Whish-whish went the brushes.
+
+"Come, James!  Soames knows best.  It's his 'business."
+
+"Ah!" said James, and the word came from deep down; "but there's
+all my money, and there's his--who's it to go to?  And when he dies
+the name goes out."
+
+Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
+dressing-table coverlet.
+
+"The name?" said Emily, "there are all the other Forsytes."
+
+"As if that helped me," muttered James.  "I shall be in my grave,
+and there'll be nobody, unless he marries again."
+
+"You're quite right," said Soames quietly; "I'm getting a divorce."
+
+James' eyes almost started from his head.
+
+"What?" he cried.  "There! nobody tells me anything."
+
+"Well," said Emily, "who would have imagined you wanted it?  My
+dear boy, that is a surprise, after all these years."
+
+"It'll be a scandal," muttered James, as if to himself; "but I
+can't help that.  Don't brush so hard.  When'll it come on?"
+
+"Before the Long Vacation; it's not defended."
+
+James' lips moved in secret calculation.  "I shan't live to see my
+grandson," he muttered.
+
+Emily ceased brushing.  "Of course you will, James.  Soames will be
+as quick as he can."
+
+There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.
+
+"Here! let's have the eau-de-Cologne," and, putting it to his nose,
+he moved his forehead in the direction of his son.  Soames bent
+over and kissed that brow just where the hair began.  A relaxing
+quiver passed over James' face, as though the wheels of anxiety
+within were running down.
+
+"I'll get to bed," he said; "I shan't want to see the papers when
+that comes.  They're a morbid lot; I can't pay attention to them,
+I'm too old."
+
+Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father say:
+
+"Here, I'm tired.  I'll say a prayer in bed."
+
+And his mother answering
+
+"That's right, James; it'll be ever so much more comfy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+OUT OF THE WEB
+
+
+On Forsyte 'Change the announcement of Jolly's death, among a
+batch of troopers, caused mixed sensation.  Strange to read that
+Jolyon Forsyte (fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of
+disease in the service of his country, and not be able to feel it
+personally.  It revived the old grudge against his father for
+having estranged himself.  For such was still the prestige of old
+Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never quite feel, as might
+have been expected, that it was they who had cut off his
+descendants for irregularity.  The news increased, of course, the
+interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val's name was Dartie, and
+even if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross, it
+would not be at all the same as if his name were Forsyte.  Not even
+casualty or glory to the Haymans would be really satisfactory.
+Family pride felt defrauded.
+
+How the rumour arose, then, that 'something very dreadful, my
+dear,' was pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell, secret
+as he kept everything.  Possibly some eye had seen 'Forsyte v.
+Forsyte and Forsyte,' in the cause list; and had added it to 'Irene
+in Paris with a fair beard.'  Possibly some wall at Park Lane had
+ears.  The fact remained that it was known--whispered among the
+old, discussed among the young--that family pride must soon receive
+a blow.
+
+Soames, paying one, of his Sunday visits to Timothy's--paying it
+with the feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying no
+more--felt knowledge in the air as he came in.  Nobody, of course,
+dared speak of it before him, but each of the four other Forsytes
+present held their breath, aware that nothing could prevent Aunt
+Juley from making them all uncomfortable.  She looked so piteously
+at Soames, she checked herself on the point of speech so often,
+that Aunt Hester excused herself and said she must go and bathe
+Timothy's eye--he had a sty coming.  Soames, impassive, slightly
+supercilious, did not stay long.  He went out with a curse stifled
+behind his pale, just smiling lips.
+
+Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the
+coming scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his
+retirement--for he had come to that grim conclusion.  To go on
+seeing all those people who had known him as a 'long-headed chap,'
+an astute adviser--after that--no!  The fastidiousness and pride
+which was so strangely, so inextricably blended in him with
+possessive obtuseness, revolted against the thought.  He would
+retire, live privately, go on buying pictures, make a great name as
+a collector--after all, his heart was more in that than it had ever
+been in Law.  In pursuance of this now fixed resolve, he had to get
+ready to amalgamate his business with another firm without letting
+people know, for that would excite curiosity and make humiliation
+cast its shadow before.  He had pitched on the firm of Cuthcott,
+Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead.  The full name after
+the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott, Holliday, Kingson,
+Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.  But after debate as to which of the
+dead still had any influence with the living, it was decided to
+reduce the title to Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte, of whom Kingson
+would be the active and Soames the sleeping partner.  For leaving
+his name, prestige, and clients behind him, Soames would receive
+considerable value.
+
+One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a
+stage of his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth,
+and after writing off liberally for depreciation by the war, found
+his value to be some hundred and thirty thousand pounds.  At his
+father's death, which could not, alas, be delayed much longer, he
+must come into at least another fifty thousand, and his yearly
+expenditure at present just reached two.  Standing among his
+pictures, he saw before him a future full of bargains earned by the
+trained faculty of knowing better than other people.  Selling what
+was about to decline, keeping what was still going up, and
+exercising judicious insight into future taste, he would make a
+unique collection, which at his death would pass to the nation
+under the title 'Forsyte Bequest.'
+
+If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with
+Madame Lamotte.  She had, he knew, but one real ambition--to live
+on her 'renter' in Paris near her grandchildren.  He would buy the
+goodwill of the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price.  Madame would
+live like a Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested as she
+would know how.  (Incidentally Soames meant to put a capable
+manager in her place, and make the restaurant pay good interest on
+his money.  There were great possibilities in Soho.)  On Annette he
+would promise to settle fifteen thousand pounds (whether designedly
+or not), precisely the sum old Jolyon had settled on 'that woman.'
+
+A letter from Jolyon's solicitor to his own had disclosed the fact
+that 'those two' were in Italy.  And an opportunity had been duly
+given for noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in London.
+The matter was clear as daylight, and would be disposed of in half
+an hour or so; but during that half-hour he, Soames, would go down
+to hell; and after that half-hour all bearers of the Forsyte name
+would feel the bloom was off the rose.  He had no illusions like
+Shakespeare that roses by any other name would smell as sweet.  The
+name was a possession, a concrete, unstained piece of property, the
+value of which would be reduced some twenty per cent. at least.
+Unless it were Roger, who had once refused to stand for Parliament,
+and--oh, irony!--Jolyon, hung on the line, there had never been a
+distinguished Forsyte.  But that very lack of distinction was the
+name's greatest asset.  It was a private name, intensely
+individual, and his own property; it had never been exploited for
+good or evil by intrusive report.  He and each member of his family
+owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference
+from the public than had been necessitated by their births, their
+marriages, their deaths.  And during these weeks of waiting and
+preparing to drop the Law, he conceived for that Law a bitter
+distaste, so deeply did he resent its coming violation of his name,
+forced on him by the need he felt to perpetuate that name in a
+lawful manner.  The monstrous injustice of the whole thing excited
+in him a perpetual suppressed fury.  He had asked no better than to
+live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go into the witness
+box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim his failure
+to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of
+his kind.  It was all upside down.  She and that fellow ought to be
+the sufferers, and they--were in Italy!  In these weeks the Law he
+had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian
+of all property, seemed to him quite pitiful.  What could be more
+insane than to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him
+when someone unlawfully took her away from him?  Did the Law not
+know that a man's name was to him the apple of his eye, that it was
+far harder to be regarded as cuckold than as seducer?  He actually
+envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where he, Soames, had
+failed.  The question of damages worried him, too.  He wanted to
+make that fellow suffer, but he remembered his cousin's words, "I
+shall be very happy," with the uneasy feeling that to claim damages
+would make not Jolyon but himself suffer; he felt uncannily that
+Jolyon would rather like to pay them--the chap was so loose.
+Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do.  The claim,
+indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour drew
+near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and
+topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer
+and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!"   And he
+gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money
+would be given to a Home for Fallen Women.  He was a long time
+hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched on it,
+he used to wake up in the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid;
+it'll draw attention.  Something quieter--better taste.'  He did
+not care for dogs, or he would have named them; and it was in
+desperation at last--for his knowledge of charities was limited--
+that he decided on the blind.  That could not be inappropriate, and
+it would make the Jury assess the damages high.
+
+A good many suits were dropping out of the list, which happened to
+be exceptionally thin that summer, so that his case would be
+reached before August.  As the day grew nearer, Winifred was his
+only comfort.  She showed the fellow-feeling of one who had been
+through the mill, and was the 'femme-sole' in whom he confided,
+well knowing that she would not let Dartie into her confidence.
+That ruffian would be only too rejoiced!  At the end of July, on
+the afternoon before the case, he went in to see her.  They had not
+yet been able to leave town, because Dartie had already spent their
+summer holiday, and Winifred dared not go to her father for more
+money while he was waiting not to be told anything about this
+affair of Soames.
+
+Soames found her with a letter in her hand.
+
+"That from Val," he asked gloomily.  "What does he say?"
+
+"He says he's married," said Winifred.
+
+"Whom to, for Goodness' sake?"
+
+Winifred looked up at him.
+
+"To Holly Forsyte, Jolyon's daughter."
+
+"What?"
+
+"He got leave and did it.  I didn't even know he knew her.
+Awkward, isn't it?"
+
+Soames uttered a short laugh at that characteristic minimisation.
+
+"Awkward!  Well, I don't suppose they'll hear about this till they
+come back.  They'd better stay out there.  That fellow will give
+her money."
+
+"But I want Val back," said Winifred almost piteously; "I miss him,
+he helps me to get on."
+
+"I know," murmured Soames.  "How's Dartie behaving now?"
+
+"It might be worse; but it's always money.  Would you like me to
+come down to the Court to-morrow, Soames?"
+
+Soames stretched out his hand for hers.  The gesture so betrayed
+the loneliness in him that she pressed it between her two.
+
+"Never mind, old boy.  You'll feel ever so much better when it's
+all over."
+
+"I don't know what I've done," said Soames huskily; "I never have.
+It's all upside down.  I was fond of her; I've always been."
+
+Winifred saw a drop of blood ooze out of his lip, and the sight
+stirred her profoundly.
+
+"Of course," she said, "it's been too bad of her all along!  But
+what shall I do about this marriage of Val's, Soames?  I don't know
+how to write to him, with this coming on.  You've seen that child.
+Is she pretty?"
+
+"Yes, she's pretty," said Soames.  "Dark--lady-like enough."
+
+'That doesn't sound so bad,' thought Winifred.  'Jolyon had style.'
+
+"It is a coil," she said.  "What will father say?
+
+"Mustn't be told," said Soames.  "The war'll soon be over now,
+you'd better let Val take to farming out there."
+
+It was tantamount to saying that his nephew was lost.
+
+"I haven't told Monty," Winifred murmured desolately.
+
+The case was reached before noon next day, and was over in little
+more than half an hour.  Soames--pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the
+witness-box--had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all
+like one dead.  The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he left
+the Courts of Justice.
+
+Four hours until he became public property!  'Solicitor's divorce
+suit!'  A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within
+him.  'Damn them all!' he thought; 'I won't run away.  I'll act as
+if nothing had happened.'  And in the sweltering heat of Fleet
+Street and Ludgate Hill he walked all the way to his City Club,
+lunched, and went back to his office.  He worked there stolidly
+throughout the afternoon.
+
+On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their
+involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were
+immediately withdrawn.  In front of St. Paul's, he stopped to buy
+the most gentlemanly of the evening papers.  Yes! there he was!
+'Well-known solicitor's divorce.  Cousin co-respondent.  Damages
+given to the blind'--so, they had got that in!  At every other
+face, he thought: 'I wonder if you know!'  And suddenly he felt
+queer, as if something were racing round in his head.
+
+What was this?  He was letting it get hold of him!  He mustn't!  He
+would be ill.  He mustn't think!  He would get down to the river
+and row about, and fish.  'I'm not going to be laid up,' he
+thought.
+
+It flashed across him that he had something of importance to do
+before he went out of town.  Madame Lamotte!  He must explain the
+Law.  Another six months before he was really free!  Only he did
+not want to see Annette!  And he passed his hand over the top of
+his head--it was very hot.
+
+He branched off through Covent Garden.  On this sultry day of late
+July the garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and
+Soho seemed more than ever the disenchanted home of rapscallionism.
+Alone, the Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily painted, with its
+blue tubs and the dwarf trees therein, retained an aloof and
+Frenchified self-respect.  It was the slack hour, and pale trim
+waitresses were preparing the little tables for dinner.  Soames
+went through into the private part.  To his discomfiture Annette
+answered his knock.  She, too, looked pale and dragged down by the
+heat.
+
+"You are quite a stranger," she said languidly.
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"I haven't wished to be; I've been busy."
+
+"Where's your mother, Annette?  I've got some news for her."
+
+"Mother is not in."
+
+It seemed to Soames that she looked at him in a queer way.  What
+did she know?  How much had her mother told her?  The worry of
+trying to make that out gave him an alarming feeling in the head.
+He gripped the edge of the table, and dizzily saw Annette come
+forward, her eyes clear with surprise.  He shut his own and said:
+
+"It's all right.  I've had a touch of the sun, I think."  The sun!
+What he had was a touch of 'darkness!  Annette's voice, French and
+composed, said:
+
+"Sit down, it will pass, then."  Her hand pressed his shoulder, and
+Soames sank into a chair.  When the dark feeling dispersed, and he
+opened his eyes, she was looking down at him.  What an inscrutable
+and odd expression for a girl of twenty!
+
+"Do you feel better?"
+
+"It's nothing," said Soames.  Instinct told him that to be feeble
+before her was not helping him--age was enough handicap without
+that.  Will-power was his fortune with Annette, he had lost ground
+these latter months from indecision--he could not afford to lose
+any more.  He got up, and said:
+
+"I'll write to your mother.  I'm going down to my river house for a
+long holiday.  I want you both to come there presently and stay.
+It's just at its best.  You will, won't you?"
+
+"It will be veree nice."  A pretty little roll of that 'r' but no
+enthusiasm.  And rather sadly he added:
+
+"You're feeling the heat; too, aren't you, Annette?  It'll do you
+good to be on the river.  Good-night."  Annette swayed forward.
+There was a sort of compunction in the movement.
+
+"Are you fit to go?  Shall I give you some coffee?"
+
+"No," said Soames firmly.  "Give me your hand."
+
+She held out her hand, and Soames raised it to his lips.  When he
+looked up, her face wore again that strange expression.  'I can't
+tell,' he thought, as he went out; 'but I mustn't think--I mustn't
+worry:
+
+But worry he did, walking toward Pall Mall.  English, not of her
+religion, middle-aged, scarred as it were by domestic tragedy, what
+had he to give her?  Only wealth, social position, leisure,
+admiration!  It was much, but was it enough for a beautiful girl of
+twenty?  He felt so ignorant about Annette.  He had, too, a curious
+fear of the French nature of her mother and herself.  They knew so
+well what they wanted.  They were almost Forsytes.  They would
+never grasp a shadow and miss a substance
+
+The tremendous effort it was to write a simple note to Madame
+Lamotte when he reached his Club warned him still further that he
+was at the end of his tether.
+
+
+"MY DEAR MADAME (he said),
+
+"You will see by the enclosed newspaper cutting that I obtained my
+decree of divorce to-day.  By the English Law I shall not, however,
+be free to marry again till the decree is confirmed six months
+hence.  In the meanwhile I have the honor to ask to be considered a
+formal suitor for the hand of your daughter.  I shall write again
+in a few days and beg you both to come and stay at my river house.
+"I am, dear Madame,
+"Sincerely yours,
+
+"SOAMES FORSYTE."
+
+
+Having sealed and posted this letter, he went into the dining-room.
+Three mouthfuls of soup convinced him that he could not eat; and,
+causing a cab to be summoned, he drove to Paddington Station and
+took the first train to Reading.  He reached his house just as the
+sun went down, and wandered out on to the lawn.  The air was
+drenched with the scent of pinks and picotees in his flower-
+borders.  A stealing coolness came off the river.
+
+Rest-peace!  Let a poor fellow rest!  Let not worry and shame and
+anger chase like evil nightbirds in his head!  Like those doves
+perched half-sleeping on their dovecot, like the furry creatures in
+the woods on the far side, and the simple folk in their cottages,
+like the trees and the river itself, whitening fast in twilight,
+like the darkening cornflower-blue sky where stars were coming up--
+let him cease from himself, and rest!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+PASSING OF AN AGE
+
+
+
+The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the last
+day of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily was
+told until it was accomplished.
+
+The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet
+hotels in London where greater expense can be incurred for less
+result than anywhere else under heaven.  Her beauty in the best
+Parisian frocks was giving him more satisfaction than if he had
+collected a perfect bit of china, or a jewel of a picture; he
+looked forward to the moment when he would exhibit her in Park
+Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy's.
+
+If some one had asked him in those days, "In confidence--are you in
+love with this girl?" he would have replied: "In love?  What is
+love?  If you mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in those
+old days when I first met her and she would not have me; when I
+sighed and starved after her and couldn't rest a minute until she
+yielded--no!  If you mean do I admire her youth and prettiness, do
+my senses ache a little when I see her moving about--yes!  Do I
+think she will keep me straight, make me a creditable wife and a
+good mother for my children?--again, yes!"
+
+"What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the women
+who are married get from the men who marry them?" And if the
+enquirer had pursued his query, "And do you think it was fair to
+have tempted this girl to give herself to you for life unless you
+have really touched her heart?" he would have answered: "The French
+see these things differently from us.  They look at marriage from
+the point of view of establishments and children; and, from my own
+experience, I am not at all sure that theirs is not the sensible
+view.  I shall not expect this time more than I can get, or she can
+give.  Years hence I shouldn't be surprised if I have trouble with
+her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have children by then.  I
+shall shut my eyes.  I have had my great passion; hers is perhaps
+to come--I don't suppose it will be for me.  I offer her a great
+deal, and I don't expect much in return, except children, or at
+least a son.  But one thing I am sure of--she has very good sense!"
+
+And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, "You do not look,
+then, for spiritual union in this marriage?" Soames would have
+lifted his sideway smile, and rejoined: "That's as it may be.  If I
+get satisfaction for my senses, perpetuation of myself; good taste
+and good humour in the house; it is all I can expect at my age.  I
+am not likely to be going out of my way towards any far-fetched
+sentimentalism."  Whereon, the enquirer must in good taste have
+ceased enquiry.
+
+The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth
+grey with unshed tears.  Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette
+beside him in dark furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning of
+the funeral procession, to the rails in Hyde Park.  Little moved
+though he ever was by public matters, this event, supremely
+symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich period, impressed his
+fancy.  In '37, when she came to the throne, 'Superior Dosset' was
+still building houses to make London hideous; and James, a
+stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his
+practice in the Law.  Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved
+their upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; 'tigers' swung behind
+cabriolets; women said, 'La!' and owned no property; there were
+manners in the land, and pigsties for the poor; unhappy devils were
+hanged for little crimes, and Dickens had but just begun to write.
+Well-nigh two generations had slipped by--of steamboats, railways,
+telegraphs, bicycles, electric light, telephones, and now these
+motorcars--of such accumulated wealth, that eight per cent. had
+become three, and Forsytes were numbered by the thousand!  Morals
+had changed, manners had changed, men had become monkeys twice-
+removed, God had become Mammon--Mammon so respectable as to deceive
+himself: Sixty-four years that favoured property, and had made the
+upper middle class; buttressed, chiselled, polished it, till it was
+almost indistinguishable in manners, morals, speech, appearance,
+habit, and soul from the nobility.  An epoch which had gilded
+individual liberty so that if a man had money, he was free in law
+and fact, and if he had not money he was free in law and not in
+fact.  An era which had canonised hypocrisy, so that to seem to be
+respectable was to be.  A great Age, whose transmuting influence
+nothing had escaped save the nature of man and the nature of the
+Universe.
+
+And to witness the passing of this Age, London--its pet and fancy--
+was pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde Park,
+hub of Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.  Under the
+grey heavens, whose drizzle just kept off, the dark concourse
+gathered to see the show.  The 'good old'  Queen, full of years and
+virtue, had emerged from her seclusion for the last time to make a
+London holiday.  From Houndsditch, Acton, Ealing, Hampstead,
+Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney, Hornsey, Leytonstone,
+Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green pastures where Forsytes
+flourish--Mayfair and Kensington, St. James' and Belgravia,
+Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent's Park, the people swarmed
+down on to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky
+pomp and pageantry.  Never again would a Queen reign so long, or
+people have a chance to see so much history buried for their money.
+A pity the war dragged on, and that the Wreath of Victory could not
+be laid upon her coffin!  All else would be there to follow and
+commemorate--soldiers, sailors, foreign princes, half-masted
+bunting, tolling bells, and above all the surging, great,
+dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple sadness here and there
+deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation.  After
+all, more than a Queen was going to her rest, a woman who had
+braved sorrow, lived well and wisely according to her lights.
+
+Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in
+Annette's, Soames waited.  Yes!  the Age was passing!  What with
+this Trade Unionism, and Labour fellows in the House of Commons,
+with continental fiction, and something in the general feel of
+everything, not to be expressed in words, things were very
+different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking night, and George
+Forsyte saying: "They're all socialists, they want our goods."
+Like James, Soames didn't know, he couldn't tell--with Edward on
+the throne!  Things would never be as safe again as under good old
+Viccy!  Convulsively he pressed his young wife's arm.  There, at
+any rate, was something substantially his own, domestically certain
+again at last; something which made property worth while--a real
+thing once more.  Pressed close against her and trying to ward
+others off, Soames was content.  The crowd swayed round them, ate
+sandwiches and dropped crumbs; boys who had climbed the plane-trees
+chattered above like monkeys, threw twigs and orange-peel.  It was
+past time; they should be coming soon!  And, suddenly, a little
+behind them to the left, he saw a tallish man with a soft hat and
+short grizzling beard, and a tallish woman in a little round fur
+cap and veil.  Jolyon and Irene talking, smiling at each other,
+close together like Annette and himself!  They had not seen him;
+and stealthily, with a very queer feeling in his heart, Soames
+watched those two.  They looked happy!  What had they come here
+for--inherently illicit creatures, rebels from the Victorian ideal?
+What business had they in this crowd?  Each of them twice exiled by
+morality--making a boast, as it were, of love and laxity!  He
+watched them fascinated; admitting grudgingly even with his arm
+thrust through Annette's that--that she--Irene--No! he would not
+admit it; and he turned his eyes away.  He would not see them, and
+let the old bitterness, the old longing rise up within him!  And
+then Annette turned to him and said: "Those two people, Soames;
+they know you, I am sure.  Who are they?"
+
+Soames nosed sideways.
+
+"What people?"
+
+"There, you see them; just turning away.  They know you."
+
+"No," Soames answered; "a mistake, my dear."
+
+"A lovely face!  And how she walk!  Elle est tres distinguee!"
+
+Soames looked then.  Into his life, out of his life she had walked
+like that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the
+contact of his soul!  He turned abruptly from that receding
+vision of the past.
+
+"You'd better attend," he said, "they're coming now!"
+
+But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the head
+of the procession, he was quivering with the sense of always
+missing something, with instinctive regret that he had not got them
+both.
+
+Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long line
+wound in through the Park gate.  He heard Annette whisper, "How sad
+it is and beautiful!" felt the clutch of her hand as she stood up
+on tiptoe; and the crowd's emotion gripped him.  There it was--the
+bier of the Queen, coffin of the Age slow passing!  And as it went
+by there came a murmuring groan from all the long line of those who
+watched, a sound such as Soames had never heard, so unconscious,
+primitive, deep and wild, that neither he nor any knew whether they
+had joined in uttering it.  Strange sound, indeed!  Tribute of an
+Age to its own death....  Ah!  Ah!....  The hold on life had
+slipped.  That which had seemed eternal was gone!  The Queen--God
+bless her!
+
+It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves
+on over grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside
+down the dense crowds mile after mile.  It was a human sound, and
+yet inhuman, pushed out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate
+knowledge of universal death and change.  None of us--none of us
+can hold on for ever!
+
+It left silence for a little--a very little time, till tongues
+began, eager to retrieve interest in the show.  Soames lingered
+just long enough to gratify Annette, then took her out of the Park
+to lunch at his father's in Park Lane....
+
+James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window.  The
+last show he would see, last of so many!  So she was gone!  Well,
+she was getting an old woman.  Swithin and he had seen her crowned-
+-slim slip of a girl, not so old as Imogen!  She had got very stout
+of late.  Jolyon and he had seen her married to that German chap,
+her husband--he had turned out all right before he died, and left
+her with that son of his.  And he remembered the many evenings he
+and his brothers and their cronies had wagged their heads over
+their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his salad days.  And now
+he had come to the throne.  They said he had steadied down--he
+didn't know--couldn't tell!  He'd make the money fly still, he
+shouldn't wonder.  What a lot of people out there!  It didn't seem
+so very long since he and Swithin stood in the crowd outside
+Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin had taken him
+to Cremorne afterwards--racketty chap, Swithin; no, it didn't seem
+much longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had joined with Roger in
+renting a balcony in Piccadilly.
+
+Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in August!
+And there was Soames married again to a French girl.  The French
+were a queer lot, but they made good mothers, he had heard.  Things
+changed!  They said this German Emperor was here for the funeral,
+his telegram to old Kruger had been in shocking taste.  He should
+not be surprised if that chap made trouble some day.  Change!  H'm!
+Well, they must look after themselves when he was gone: he didn't
+know where he'd be!  And now Emily had asked Dartie to lunch, with
+Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames' wife--she was always doing
+something.  And there was Irene living with that fellow Jolyon,
+they said.  He'd marry her now, he supposed.
+
+'My brother Jolyon,' he thought, 'what would he have said to it
+all?' And somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his elder
+brother, once so looked up to, would have said, so worried James
+that he got up from his chair by the window, and began slowly,
+feebly to pace the room.
+
+'She was a pretty thing, too,' he thought; 'I was fond of her.
+Perhaps Soames didn't suit her--I don't know--I can't tell.  We
+never had any trouble with our wives.'  Women had changed
+everything had changed!  And now the Queen was dead--well, there it
+was!  A movement in the crowd brought him to a standstill at the
+window, his nose touching the pane and whitening from the chill of
+it.  They had got her as far as Hyde Park Corner--they were passing
+now!  Why didn't Emily come up here where she could see, instead of
+fussing about lunch.  He missed her at that moment--missed her!
+Through the bare branches of the plane-trees he could just see the
+procession, could see the hats coming off the people's heads--a lot
+of them would catch colds, he shouldn't wonder!  A voice behind him
+said:
+
+"You've got a capital view here, James!"
+
+"There you are!" muttered James; "why didn't you come before?  You
+might have missed it!"
+
+And he was silent, staring with all his might.
+
+"What's the noise?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"There's no noise," returned Emily; "what are you thinking of?--
+they wouldn't cheer."
+
+"I can hear it."
+
+"Nonsense, James!"
+
+No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was the
+groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.
+
+"Don't you ever tell me where I'm buried," he said suddenly.  "I
+shan't want to know."  And he turned from the window.  There she
+went, the old Queen; she'd had a lot of anxiety--she'd be glad to
+be out of it, he should think!
+
+Emily took up the hair-brushes.
+
+"There'll be just time to brush your head," she said, "before they
+come.  You must look your best, James."
+
+"Ah!" muttered James; "they say she's pretty."
+
+The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the
+dining-room.  James was seated by the fire when she was brought in.
+He placed, his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly raised
+himself.  Stooping and immaculate in his frock-coat, thin as a line
+in Euclid, he received Annette's hand in his; and the anxious eyes
+of his furrowed face, which had lost its colour now, doubted above
+her.  A little warmth came into them and into his cheeks, refracted
+from her bloom.
+
+"How are you?" he said.  "You've been to see the Queen, I suppose?
+Did you have a good crossing?"
+
+In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of his
+name.
+
+Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette murmured
+something in French which James did not understand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, "you want your lunch, I expect.  Soames, ring
+the bell; we won't wait for that chap Dartie."  But just then they
+arrived.  Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see 'the old
+girl.'  With an early cocktail beside him, he had taken a 'squint'
+from the smoking-room of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen
+had been obliged to come back from the Park to fetch him thence.
+His brown eyes rested on Annette with a stare of almost startled
+satisfaction.  The second beauty that fellow Soames had picked up!
+What women could see in him!  Well, she would play him the same
+trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a lucky
+devil!  And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of
+Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his
+assurance.  Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred's
+composure, Imogen's enquiring friendliness, Dartie's showing-off,
+and James' solicitude about her food, it was not, Soames felt, a
+successful lunch for his bride.  He took her away very soon.
+
+"That Monsieur Dartie," said Annette in the cab, "je n'aime pas ce
+type-la!"
+
+"No, by George!" said Soames.
+
+"Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty.  Your father
+is veree old.  I think your mother has trouble with him; I should
+not like to be her."
+
+Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his
+young wife; but it disquieted him a little.  The thought may have
+just flashed through him, too: 'When I'm eighty she'll be
+fifty-five, having trouble with me!'
+
+"There's just one other house of my relations I must take you to,"
+he said; "you'll find it funny, but we must get it over; and then
+we'll dine and go to the theatre."
+
+In this way he prepared her for Timothy's.  But Timothy's was
+different.  They were delighted to see dear Soames after this long
+long time; and so this was Annette!
+
+"You are so pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for dear
+Soames, aren't you?  But he's very attentive and careful--such a
+good hush...."  Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips
+just under each of Annette's eyes--she afterwards described them to
+Francie, who dropped in, as: "Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I quite
+wanted to kiss them.  I must say dear Soames is a perfect
+connoisseur.  In her French way, and not so very French either, I
+think she's as pretty--though not so distinguished, not so
+alluring--as Irene.  Because she was alluring, wasn't she? with
+that white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, couleur de--
+what was it?  I always forget."
+
+"Feuille morte," Francie prompted.
+
+"Of course, dead leaves--so strange.  I remember when I was a girl,
+before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy--to 'walk' it was
+called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest, and
+beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady."
+
+"Yes, auntie," said Francie, "but I don't see the connection."
+
+"Oh!" replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, "it was so alluring,
+and her eyes and hair, you know...."  She was silent, as if
+surprised in some indelicacy.  "Feuille morte," she added suddenly;
+"Hester--do remember that!"....
+
+Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether
+Timothy should or should not be summoned to see Annette.
+
+"Oh, don't bother!" said Soames.
+
+"But it's no trouble, only of course Annette's being French might
+upset him a little.  He was so scared about Fashoda.  I think
+perhaps we had better not run the risk, Hester.  It's nice to have
+her all to ourselves, isn't it?  And how are you, Soames?  Have you
+quite got over your...."
+
+Hester interposed hurriedly:
+
+"What do you think of London, Annette?"
+
+Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply.  It came, sensible,
+composed: "Oh! I know London.  I have visited before."
+
+He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the
+restaurant.  The French had different notions about gentility, and
+to shrink from connection with it might seem to her ridiculous; he
+had waited to be married before mentioning it; and now he wished he
+hadn't.
+
+"And what part do you know best?" said Aunt Juley.
+
+"Soho," said Annette simply.
+
+Soames snapped his jaw.
+
+"Soho?" repeated Aunt Juley; "Soho?"
+
+'That'll go round the family,' thought Soames.
+
+"It's very French, and interesting," he said.
+
+"Yes," murmured Aunt Juley, "your Uncle Roger had some houses there
+once; he was always having to turn the tenants out, I remember."
+
+Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.
+
+"Of course," said Aunt Juley, "you will be going down there soon to
+settle in.  We are all so looking forward to the time when Annette
+has a dear little...."
+
+"Juley!" cried Aunt Hester desperately, "ring tea!"
+
+Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.
+
+"I shouldn't mention Soho if I were you," he said in the cab.
+"It's rather a shady part of London; and you're altogether above
+that restaurant business now; I mean," he added, "I want you to
+know nice people, and the English are fearful snobs."
+
+Annette's clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.
+
+"Yes?" she said.
+
+'H'm!' thought Soames, 'that's meant for me!' and he looked at her
+hard.  'She's got good business instincts,' he thought.  'I must
+make her grasp it once for all!'
+
+"Look here, Annette!  it's very simple, only it wants
+understanding.  Our professional and leisured classes still think
+themselves a cut above our business classes, except of course the
+very rich.  It may be stupid, but there it is, you see.  It isn't
+advisable in England to let people know that you ran a restaurant
+or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade.  It may have been
+extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on you; you don't
+have such a good time, or meet such nice people--that's all."
+
+"I see," said Annette; "it is the same in France."
+
+"Oh!" murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback.  "Of
+course, class is everything, really."
+
+"Yes," said Annette; "comme vous etes sage."
+
+'That's all right,' thought Soames, watching her lips, 'only she's
+pretty cynical.'  His knowledge of French was not yet such as to
+make him grieve that she had not said 'tu.'  He slipped his arm
+round her, and murmured with an effort:
+
+"Et vous etes ma belle femme."
+
+Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.
+
+"Oh, non!" she said.  "Oh, non! ne parlez pas Francais, Soames.
+What is that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?"
+
+Soames bit his lip.  "God knows!" he said; "she's always saying
+something;" but he knew better than God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SUSPENDED ANIMATION
+
+
+The war dragged on.  Nicholas had been heard to say that it would
+cost three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they'd done
+with it!  The income-tax was seriously threatened.  Still, there
+would be South Africa for their money, once for all.  And though
+the possessive instinct felt badly shaken at three o'clock in the
+morning, it recovered by breakfast-time with the recollection that
+one gets nothing in this world without paying for it.  So, on the
+whole, people went about their business much as if there were no
+war, no concentration camps, no slippery de Wet, no feeling on the
+Continent, no anything unpleasant.  Indeed, the attitude of the
+nation was typified by Timothy's map, whose animation was
+suspended--for Timothy no longer moved the flags, and they could
+not move themselves, not even backwards and forwards as they should
+have done.
+
+Suspended animation went further; it invaded Forsyte 'Change, and
+produced a general uncertainty as to what was going to happen next.
+The announcement in the marriage column of The Times, 'Jolyon
+Forsyte to Irene, only daughter of the late Professor Heron,' had
+occasioned doubt whether Irene had been justly described.  And yet,
+on the whole, relief was felt that she had not been entered as
+'Irene, late the wife,' or 'the divorced wife,' 'of Soames
+Forsyte.'  Altogether, there had been a kind of sublimity from the
+first about the way the family had taken that 'affair.'  As James
+had phrased it, 'There it was!'  No use to fuss!  Nothing to be had
+out of admitting that it had been a 'nasty jar'--in the phraseology
+of the day.
+
+But what would happen now that both Soames and Jolyon were married
+again?  That was very intriguing.  George was known to have laid
+Eustace six to four on a little Jolyon before a little Soames.
+George was so droll!  It was rumoured, too, that he and Dartie had
+a bet as to whether James would attain the age of ninety, though
+which of them had backed James no one knew.
+
+Early in May, Winifred came round to say that Val had been wounded
+in the leg by a spent bullet, and was to be discharged.  His wife
+was nursing him.  He would have a little limp--nothing to speak of.
+He wanted his grandfather to buy him a farm out there where he
+could breed horses.  Her father was giving Holly eight hundred a
+year, so they could be quite comfortable, because his grandfather
+would give Val five, he had said; but as to the farm, he didn't
+know--couldn't tell: he didn't want Val to go throwing away his
+money.
+
+"But you know," said Winifred, "he must do something."
+
+Aunt Hester thought that perhaps his dear grandfather was wise,
+because if he didn't buy a farm it couldn't turn out badly.
+
+"But Val loves horses," said Winifred.  "It'd be such an occupation
+for him."
+
+Aunt Juley thought that horses were very uncertain, had not
+Montague found them so?
+
+"Val's different," said Winifred; "he takes after me."
+
+Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever.  "I always
+remember," she added, "how he gave his bad penny to a beggar.  His
+dear grandfather was so pleased.  He thought it showed such
+presence of mind.  I remember his saying that he ought to go into
+the Navy."
+
+Aunt Hester chimed in: Did not Winifred think that it was much
+better for the young people to be secure and not run any risk at
+their age?
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "if they were in London, perhaps; in London
+it's amusing to do nothing.  But out there, of course, he'll simply
+get bored to death."
+
+Aunt Hester thought that it would be nice for him to work, if he
+were quite sure not to lose by it.  It was not as if they had no
+money.  Timothy, of course, had done so well by retiring.  Aunt
+Juley wanted to know what Montague had said.
+
+Winifred did not tell her, for Montague had merely remarked: "Wait
+till the old man dies."
+
+At this moment Francie was announced.  Her eyes were brimming with
+a smile.
+
+"Well," she said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"Of what, dear?"
+
+"In The Times this morning."
+
+"We haven't seen it, we always read it after dinner; Timothy has it
+till then."
+
+Francie rolled her eyes.
+
+"Do you think you ought to tell us?" said Aunt Juley.  "What was
+it?"
+
+"Irene's had a son at Robin Hill."
+
+Aunt Juley drew in her breath.  "But," she said, "they were only
+married in March!"
+
+"Yes, Auntie; isn't it interesting?"
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "I'm glad.  I was sorry for Jolyon losing
+his boy.  It might have been Val."
+
+Aunt Juley seemed to go into a sort of dream.  "I wonder," she
+murmured, "what dear Soames will think?  He has so wanted to have a
+son himself.  A little bird has always told me that."
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "he's going to--bar accidents."
+
+Gladness trickled out of Aunt Juley's eyes.
+
+"How delightful!" she said.  "When?"
+
+"November."
+
+Such a lucky month!  But she did wish it could be sooner.  It was a
+long time for James to wait, at his age!
+
+To wait!  They dreaded it for James, but they were used to it
+themselves.  Indeed, it was their great distraction.  To wait!  For
+The Times to read; for one or other of their nieces or nephews to
+come in and cheer them up; for news of Nicholas' health; for that
+decision of Christopher's about going on the stage; for information
+concerning the mine of Mrs. MacAnder's nephew; for the doctor to
+come about Hester's inclination to wake up early in the morning;
+for books from the library which were always out; for Timothy to
+have a cold; for a nice quiet warm day, not too hot, when they
+could take a turn in Kensington Gardens.  To wait, one on each side
+of the hearth in the drawing-room, for the clock between them to
+strike; their thin, veined, knuckled hands plying knitting-needles
+and crochet-hooks, their hair ordered to stop--like Canute's waves-
+-from any further advance in colour.  To wait in their black silks
+or satins for the Court to say that Hester might wear her dark
+green, and Juley her darker maroon.  To wait, slowly turning over
+and over, in their old minds the little joys and sorrows, events
+and expectancies, of their little family world, as cows chew
+patient cuds in a familiar field.  And this new event was so well
+worth waiting for.  Soames had always been their pet, with his
+tendency to give them pictures, and his almost weekly visits which
+they missed so much, and his need for their sympathy evoked by the
+wreck of his first marriage.  This new event--the birth of an heir
+to Soames--was so important for him, and for his dear father, too,
+that James might not have to die without some certainty about
+things.  James did so dislike uncertainty; and with Montague, of
+course, he could not feel really satisfied to leave no grand-
+children but the young Darties.  After all, one's own name did
+count!  And as James' ninetieth birthday neared they wondered what
+precautions he was taking.  He would be the first of the Forsytes to
+reach that age, and set, as it were, a new standard in holding on
+to life.  That was so important, they felt, at their ages eighty-
+seven and eighty-five; though they did not want to think of
+themselves when they had Timothy, who was not yet eighty-two, to
+think of.  There was, of course, a better world.  'In my Father's
+house are many mansions' was one of Aunt Juley's favourite sayings-
+-it always comforted her, with its suggestion of house property,
+which had made the fortune of dear Roger.  The Bible was, indeed, a
+great resource, and on very fine Sundays there was church in the
+morning; and sometimes Juley would steal into Timothy's study when
+she was sure he was out, and just put an open New Testament
+casually among the books on his little table--he was a great
+reader, of course, having been a publisher.  But she had noticed
+that Timothy was always cross at dinner afterwards.  And Smither
+had told her more than once that she had picked books off the floor
+in doing the room.  Still, with all that, they did feel that heaven
+could not be quite so cosy as the rooms in which they and Timothy
+had been waiting so long.  Aunt Hester, especially, could not bear
+the thought of the exertion.  Any change, or rather the thought of
+a change--for there never was any--always upset her very much.
+Aunt Juley, who had more spirit, sometimes thought it would be
+quite exciting; she had so enjoyed that visit to Brighton the year
+dear Susan died.  But then Brighton one knew was nice, and it was
+so difficult to tell what heaven would be like, so on the whole she
+was more than content to wait.
+
+On the morning of James' birthday, August the 5th, they felt
+extraordinary animation, and little notes passed between them by
+the hand of Smither while they were having breakfast in their beds.
+Smither must go round and take their love and little presents and
+find out how Mr. James was, and whether he had passed a good night
+with all the excitement.  And on the way back would Smither call in
+at Green Street--it was a little out of her way, but she could take
+the bus up Bond Street afterwards; it would be a nice little change
+for her--and ask dear Mrs. Dartie to be sure and look in before she
+went out of town.
+
+All this Smither did--an undeniable servant trained many years ago
+under Aunt Ann to a perfection not now procurable.  Mr. James, so
+Mrs. James said, had passed an excellent night, he sent his love;
+Mrs. James had said he was very funny and had complained that he
+didn't know what all the fuss was about.  Oh! and Mrs. Dartie sent
+her love, and she would come to tea.
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester, rather hurt that their presents had not
+received special mention--they forgot every year that James could
+not bear to receive presents, 'throwing away their money on him,'
+as he always called it--were 'delighted'; it showed that James was
+in good spirits, and that was so important for him.  And they began
+to wait for Winifred.  She came at four, bringing Imogen, and Maud,
+just back from school, and 'getting such a pretty girl, too,' so
+that it was extremely difficult to ask for news about Annette.
+Aunt Juley, however, summoned courage to enquire whether Winifred
+had heard anything, and if Soames was anxious.
+
+"Uncle Soames is always anxious, Auntie," interrupted Imogen; "he
+can't be happy now he's got it."
+
+The words struck familiarly on Aunt Juley's ears.  Ah! yes; that
+funny drawing of George's, which had not been shown them!  But what
+did Imogen mean?  That her uncle always wanted more than he could
+have?  It was not at all nice to think like that.
+
+Imogen's voice rose clear and clipped:
+
+"Imagine!  Annette's only two years older than me; it must be awful
+for her, married to Uncle Soames."
+
+Aunt Juley lifted her hands in horror.
+
+"My dear," she said, "you don't know what you're talking about.
+Your Uncle Soames is a match for anybody.  He's a very clever man,
+and good-looking and wealthy, and most considerate and careful, and
+not at all old, considering everything."
+
+Imogen, turning her luscious glance from one to the other of the
+'old dears,' only smiled.
+
+"I hope," said Aunt Juley quite severely, "that you will marry as
+good a man."
+
+"I shan't marry a good man, Auntie," murmured Imogen; "they're
+dull."
+
+"If you go on like this," replied Aunt Juley, still very much
+upset, "you won't marry anybody.  We'd better not pursue the
+subject;" and turning to Winifred, she said: "How is Montague?"
+
+That evening, while they were waiting for dinner, she murmured:
+
+"I've told Smither to get up half a bottle of the sweet champagne,
+Hester.  I think we ought to drink dear James' health, and--and the
+health of Soames' wife; only, let's keep that quite secret.  I'll
+Just say like this, 'And you know, Hester!'  and then we'll drink.
+It might upset Timothy."
+
+"It's more likely to upset us," said Aunt Nester.  "But we must, I
+suppose; for such an occasion."
+
+"Yes," said Aunt Juley rapturously, "it is an occasion!  Only fancy
+if he has a dear little boy, to carry the family on!  I do feel it
+so important, now that Irene has had a son.  Winifred says George
+is calling Jolyon 'The Three-Decker,' because of his three
+families, you know!  George is droll.  And fancy!  Irene is living
+after all in the house Soames had built for them both.  It does
+seem hard on dear Soames; and he's always been so regular."
+
+That night in bed, excited and a little flushed still by her glass
+of wine and the secrecy of the second toast, she lay with her
+prayer-book opened flat, and her eyes fixed on a ceiling yellowed
+by the light from her reading-lamp.  Young things!  It was so nice
+for them all!  And she would be so happy if she could see dear
+Soames happy.  But, of course, he must be now, in spite of what
+Imogen had said.  He would have all that he wanted: property, and
+wife, and children!  And he would live to a green old age, like his
+dear father, and forget all about Irene and that dreadful case.  If
+only she herself could be here to buy his children their first
+rocking-horse!  Smither should choose it for her at the stores,
+nice and dappled.  Ah! how Roger used to rock her until she fell
+off!  Oh dear! that was a long time ago!  It was!  'In my Father's
+house are many mansions--'A little scrattling noise caught her ear-
+-'but no mice!'  she thought mechanically.  The noise increased.
+There! it was a mouse!  How naughty of Smither to say there wasn't!
+It would be eating through the wainscot before they knew where they
+were, and they would have to have the builders in.  They were such
+destructive things!  And she lay, with her eyes just moving,
+following in her mind that little scrattling sound, and waiting for
+sleep to release her from it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BIRTH OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on
+the path above the river, turned round and walked back to the
+garden door, without having realised that he had moved.  The sound
+of wheels crunching the drive convinced him that time had passed,
+and the doctor gone.  What, exactly, had he said?
+
+"This is the position, Mr. Forsyte.  I can make pretty certain of
+her life if I operate, but the baby will be born dead.  If I don't
+operate, the baby will most probably be born alive, but it's a
+great risk for the mother--a great risk.  In either case I don't
+think she can ever have another child.  In her state she obviously
+can't decide for herself, and we can't wait for her mother.  It's
+for you to make the decision, while I'm getting what's necessary.
+I shall be back within the hour."
+
+The decision!  What a decision!  No time to get a specialist down!
+No time for anything!
+
+The sound of wheels died away, but Soames still stood intent; then,
+suddenly covering his ears, he walked back to the river.  To come
+before its time like this, with no chance to foresee anything, not
+even to get her mother here!  It was for her mother to make that
+decision, and she couldn't arrive from Paris till to-night!  If
+only he could have understood the doctor's jargon, the medical
+niceties, so as to be sure he was weighing the chances properly;
+but they were Greek to him--like a legal problem to a layman.  And
+yet he must decide!  He brought his hand away from his brow wet,
+though the air was chilly.  These sounds which came from her room!
+To go back there would only make it more difficult.  He must be
+calm, clear.  On the one hand life, nearly certain, of his young
+wife, death quite certain, of his child; and--no more children
+afterwards!  On the other, death perhaps of his wife, nearly
+certain life for the child; and--no more children afterwards!
+Which to choose?....  It had rained this last fortnight--the river
+was very full, and in the water, collected round the little
+house-boat moored by his landing-stage, were many leaves from the
+woods above, brought off by a frost.  Leaves fell, lives drifted
+down--Death!  To decide about death!  And no one to give him a
+hand.  Life lost was lost for good.  Let nothing go that you could
+keep; for, if it went, you couldn't get it back.  It left you bare,
+like those trees when they lost their leaves; barer and barer until
+you, too, withered and came down.  And, by a queer somersault of
+thought, he seemed to see not Annette lying up there behind that
+window-pane on which the sun was shining, but Irene lying in their
+bedroom in Montpellier Square, as it might conceivably have been
+her fate to lie, sixteen years ago.  Would he have hesitated then?
+Not a moment!  Operate, operate!  Make certain of her life!  No
+decision--a mere instinctive cry for help, in spite of his know-
+ledge, even then, that she did not love him!  But this!  Ah! there
+was nothing overmastering in his feeling for Annette!  Many times
+these last months, especially since she had been growing fright-
+ened, he had wondered.  She had a will of her own, was selfish in
+her French way.  And yet--so pretty!  What would she wish--to take
+the risk.  'I know she wants the child,' he thought.  'If it's born
+dead, and no more chance afterwards--it'll upset her terribly.  No
+more chance!  All for nothing!  Married life with her for years and
+years without a child.  Nothing to steady her!  She's too young.
+Nothing to look forward to, for her--for me!  For me!'  He struck
+his hands against his chest!  Why couldn't he think without
+bringing himself in--get out of himself and see what he ought to
+do?  The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it had come in
+contact with a breastplate.  Out of oneself!  Impossible!  Out into
+soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless space!  The very idea
+was ghastly, futile!  And touching there the bedrock of reality,
+the bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames rested for a moment.  When
+one ceased, all ceased; it might go on, but there'd be nothing in
+it!
+
+He looked at his watch.  In half an hour the doctor would be back.
+He must decide!  If against the operation and she died, how face
+her mother and the doctor afterwards?  How face his own conscience?
+It was his child that she was having.  If for the operation--then
+he condemned them both to childlessness.  And for what else had he
+married her but to have a lawful heir?  And his father--at death's
+door, waiting for the news!  'It's cruel!' he thought; 'I ought
+never to have such a thing to settle!  It's cruel!'  He turned
+towards the house.  Some deep, simple way of deciding!  He took out
+a coin, and put it back.  If he spun it, he knew he would not abide
+by what came up!  He went into the dining-room, furthest away from
+that room whence the sounds issued.  The doctor had said there was
+a chance.  In here that chance seemed greater; the river did not
+flow, nor the leaves fall.  A fire was burning.  Soames unlocked
+the tantalus.  He hardly ever touched spirits, but now--he poured
+himself out some whisky and drank it neat, craving a faster flow of
+blood.  'That fellow Jolyon,' he thought; 'he had children already.
+He has the woman I really loved; and now a son by her!  And I--I'm
+asked to destroy my only child!  Annette can't die; it's not
+possible.  She's strong!'
+
+He was still standing sullenly at the sideboard when he heard the
+doctor's carriage, and went out to him.  He had to wait for him to
+come downstairs.
+
+"Well, doctor?"
+
+"The situation's the same.  Have you decided?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "don't operate!"
+
+"Not?  You understand--the risk's great?"
+
+In Soames' set face nothing moved but the lips.
+
+"You said there was a chance?"
+
+"A chance, yes; not much of one."
+
+"You say the baby must be born dead if you do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you still think that in any case she can't have another?"
+
+"One can't be absolutely sure, but it's most unlikely."
+
+"She's strong," said Soames; "we'll take the risk."
+
+The doctor looked at him very gravely.  "It's on your shoulders,"
+he said; "with my own wife, I couldn't."
+
+Soames' chin jerked up as if someone had hit him.
+
+"Am I of any use up there?" he asked.
+
+"No; keep away."
+
+"I shall be in my picture-gallery, then; you know where."
+
+The doctor nodded, and went upstairs.
+
+Soames continued to stand, listening.  'By this time to-morrow,' he
+thought, 'I may have her death on my hands.'  No!  it was unfair--
+monstrous, to put it that way!  Sullenness dropped on him again,
+and he went up to the gallery.  He stood at the window.  The wind
+was in the north; it was cold, clear; very blue sky, heavy ragged
+white clouds chasing across; the river blue, too, through the
+screen of goldening trees; the woods all rich with colour, glowing,
+burnished-an early autumn.  If it were his own life, would he be
+taking that risk?  'But she'd take the risk of losing me,' he
+thought, 'sooner than lose her child!  She doesn't really love me!'
+What could one expect--a girl and French?  The one thing really
+vital to them both, vital to their marriage and their futures, was
+a child!  'I've been through a lot for this,' he thought, 'I'll
+hold on--hold on.  There's a chance of keeping both--a chance!'
+One kept till things were taken--one naturally kept!  He began
+walking round the gallery.  He had made one purchase lately which
+he knew was a fortune in itself, and he halted before it--a girl
+with dull gold hair which looked like filaments of metal gazing at
+a little golden monster she was holding in her hand.  Even at this
+tortured moment he could just feel the extraordinary nature of the
+bargain he had made--admire the quality of the table, the floor,
+the chair, the girl's figure, the absorbed expression on her face,
+the dull gold filaments of her hair, the bright gold of the little
+monster.  Collecting pictures; growing richer, richer!  What use,
+if....!  He turned his back abruptly on the picture, and went to
+the window.  Some of his doves had flown up from their perches
+round the dovecot, and were stretching their wings in the wind.  In
+the clear sharp sunlight their whiteness almost flashed.  They flew
+far, making a flung-up hieroglyphic against the sky.  Annette fed
+the doves; it was pretty to see her.  They took it out of her hand;
+they knew she was matter-of-fact.  A choking sensation came into
+his throat.  She would not--could nod die!  She was too--too
+sensible; and she was strong, really strong, like her mother, in
+spite of her fair prettiness
+
+It was already growing dark when at last he opened the door, and
+stood listening.  Not a sound!  A milky twilight crept about the
+stairway and the landings below.  He had turned back when a sound
+caught his ear.  Peering down, he saw a black shape moving, and his
+heart stood still.  What was it?  Death?  The shape of Death coming
+from her door?  No!  only a maid without cap or apron.  She came to
+the foot of his flight of stairs and said breathlessly:
+
+"The doctor wants to see you, sir."
+
+He ran down.  She stood flat against the wall to let him pass, and
+said:
+
+"Oh, Sir! it's over."
+
+"Over?" said Soames, with a sort of menace; "what d'you mean?"
+
+"It's born, sir."
+
+He dashed up the four steps in front of him, and came suddenly on
+the doctor in the dim passage.  The man was wiping his brow.
+
+"Well?" he said; "quick!"
+
+"Both living; it's all right, I think."
+
+Soames stood quite still, covering his eyes.
+
+"I congratulate you," he heard the doctor say; "it was touch and
+go."
+
+Soames let fall the hand which was covering his face.
+
+"Thanks," he said; "thanks very much.  What is it?"
+
+"Daughter--luckily; a son would have killed her--the head."
+
+A daughter!
+
+"The utmost care of both," he hearts the doctor say, "and we shall
+do.  When does the mother come?"
+
+"To-night, between nine and ten, I hope."
+
+"I'll stay till then.  Do you want to see them?"
+
+"Not now," said Soames; "before you go.  I'll have dinner sent up
+to you."  And he went downstairs.
+
+Relief unspeakable, and yet--a daughter!  It seemed to him unfair.
+To have taken that risk--to have been through this agony--and what
+agony!--for a daughter!  He stood before the blazing fire of wood
+logs in the hall, touching it with his toe and trying to readjust
+himself.  'My father!' he thought.  A bitter disappointment, no
+disguising it!  One never got all one wanted in this life!  And
+there was no other--at least, if there was, it was no use!
+
+While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.
+
+"Come up at once, your father sinking fast.
+--MOTHER."
+
+He read it with a choking sensation.  One would have thought he
+couldn't feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this.
+Half-past seven, a train from Reading at nine, and madame's train,
+if she had caught it, came in at eight-forty--he would meet that,
+and go on.  He ordered the carriage, ate some dinner mechanically,
+and went upstairs.  The doctor came out to him.
+
+"They're sleeping."
+
+"I won't go in," said Soames with relief.  "My father's dying; I
+have to--go up.  Is it all right?"
+
+The doctor's face expressed a kind of doubting admiration.  'If
+they were all as unemotional' he might have been saying.
+
+"Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind.  You'll be down soon?"
+
+"To-morrow," said Soames.  "Here's the address."
+
+The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.
+
+"Good-night!" said Soames abruptly, and turned away.  He put on his
+fur coat.  Death!  It was a chilly business.  He smoked a cigarette
+in the carriage--one of his rare cigarettes.  The night was windy
+and flew on black wings; the carriage lights had to search out the
+way.  His father!  That old, old man!  A comfortless night--to die!
+
+The London train came in just as he reached the station, and Madame
+Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the lamplight,
+came towards the exit with a dressing-bag.
+
+"This all you have?" asked Soames.
+
+"But yes; I had not the time.  How is my little one?"
+
+"Doing well--both.  A girl!"
+
+"A girl!  What joy!  I had a frightful crossing!"
+
+Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing, climbed
+into the brougham.
+
+"And you, mon cher?"
+
+"My father's dying," said Soames between his teeth.  "I'm going up.
+Give my love to Annette."
+
+"Tiens!"   murmured Madame Lamotte; "quel malheur!"
+
+Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train.  'The
+French!'  he thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JAMES IS TOLD
+
+
+A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the
+air and the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the room
+he had not left since the middle of September--and James was in
+deep waters.  A little cold, passing his little strength and flying
+quickly to his lungs.  "He mustn't catch cold," the doctor had
+declared, and he had gone and caught it.  When he first felt it in
+his throat he had said to his nurse--for he had one now--"There, I
+knew how it would be, airing the room like that!"  For a whole day
+he was highly nervous about himself and went in advance of all
+precautions and remedies; drawing every breath with extreme care
+and having his temperature taken every hour.  Emily was not
+alarmed.
+
+But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: "He won't
+have his temperature taken."
+
+Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said
+softly, "How do you feel, James?" holding the thermometer to his
+lips.  James looked up at her.
+
+"What's the good of that?" he murmured huskily; "I don't want to
+know."
+
+Then she was alarmed.  He breathed with difficulty, he looked
+terribly frail, white, with faint red discolorations.  She had 'had
+trouble' with him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been James
+for nearly fifty years; she couldn't remember or imagine life
+without James--James, behind all his fussiness, his pessimism, his
+crusty shell, deeply affectionate, really kind and generous to them
+all!
+
+All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was
+in his eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his
+face which told her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope.
+His very stillness, the way he conserved every little scrap of
+energy, showed the tenacity with which he was fighting.  It touched
+her deeply; and though her face was composed and comfortable in the
+sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks when she was out of it.
+
+About tea-time on the third day--she had just changed her dress,
+keeping her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed
+everything--she saw a difference.  'It's no use; I'm tired,' was
+written plainly across that white face, and when she went up to
+him, he muttered: "Send for Soames."
+
+"Yes, James," she said comfortably; "all right--at once."  And she
+kissed his forehead.  A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it off
+she saw that his eyes looked grateful.  Much upset, and without
+hope now, she sent Soames the telegram.
+
+When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was
+still as a grave.  Warmson's broad face looked almost narrow; he
+took the fur coat with a sort of added care, saying:
+
+"Will you have a glass of wine, sir?"
+
+Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.
+
+Warmson's lips twitched.  "He's asking for you, sir;" and suddenly
+he blew his nose.  "It's a long time, sir," he said, "that I've
+been with Mr. Forsyte--a long time."
+
+Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs.
+This house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never seemed
+to him so warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last pilgrimage
+to his father's room.  It was not his taste; but in its own sub-
+stantial, lincrusta way it was the acme of comfort and security.
+And the night was so dark and windy; the grave so cold and lonely
+
+He paused outside the door.  No sound came from within.  He turned
+the handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived.  The
+light was shaded.  His mother and Winifred were sitting on the far
+side of the bed; the nurse was moving away from the near side where
+was an empty chair.  'For me!'  thought Soames.  As he moved from
+the door his mother and sister rose, but he signed with his hand
+and they sat down again.  He went up to the chair and stood looking
+at his father.  James' breathing was as if strangled; his eyes were
+closed.  And in Soames, looking on his father so worn and white and
+wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there rose a
+passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel, inexorable
+Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body, slowly
+pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who was
+dearest to him in the world.  His father, of all men, had lived a
+careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward--to
+have life slowly, painfully squeezed out of him!  And, without
+knowing that he spoke, he said: "It's cruel!"
+
+He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face towards
+the bed.  Women!  They put up with things so much.  better than
+men.  He took a step nearer to his father.  For three days James
+had not been shaved, and his lips and chin were covered with hair,
+hardly more snowy than his forehead.  It softened his face, gave it
+a queer look already not of this world.  His eyes opened.  Soames
+went quite close and bent over.  The lips moved.
+
+"Here I am, Father:"
+
+"Um--what--what news?  They never tell...."  the voice died, and a
+flood of emotion made Soames' face work so that he could not speak.
+Tell him?--yes.  But what?  He made a great effort, got his lips
+together, and said:
+
+"Good news, dear, good--Annette, a son."
+
+"Ah!"  It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,
+triumphant--like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants.  The
+eyes closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again.
+Soames recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down.  The lie he had
+told, based, as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct that
+after death James would not know the truth, had taken away all
+power of feeling for the moment.  His arm brushed against
+something.  It was his father's naked foot.  In the struggle to
+breathe he had pushed it out from under the clothes.  Soames took
+it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white, very cold.
+What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder soon!
+He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his father's
+laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose again within
+him.  A little sob, quickly smothered, came from Winifred, but his
+mother sat unmoving with her eyes fixed on James.  Soames signed to
+the nurse.
+
+"Where's the doctor?" he whispered.
+
+"He's been sent for."
+
+"Can't you do anything to ease his breathing?"
+
+"Only an injection; and he can't stand it.  The doctor said, while
+he was fighting...."
+
+"He's not fighting," whispered Soames, "he's being slowly
+smothered.  It's awful."
+
+James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying.
+Soames rose and bent over him.  James feebly moved his two hands,
+and Soames took them.
+
+"He wants to be pulled up," whispered the nurse.
+
+Soames pulled.  He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of
+anger passed over James' face.  The nurse plumped the pillows.
+Soames laid the hands down, and bending over kissed his father's
+forehead.  As he was raising himself again, James' eyes bent on him
+a look which seemed to come from the very depths of what was left
+within.  'I'm done, my boy,' it seemed to say, 'take care of them,
+take care of yourself; take care--I leave it all to you.'
+
+"Yes, Yes," Soames whispered, "yes, yes."
+
+Behind him the nurse did he knew, not what, for his father made a
+tiny movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and
+almost at once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay very
+still.  The strained expression on his face passed, a curious white
+tranquillity took its place.  His eyelids quivered, rested; the
+whole face rested; at ease.  Only by the faint puffing of his lips
+could they tell that he was breathing.  Soames sank back on his
+chair, and fell to cherishing the foot again.  He heard the nurse
+quietly crying over there by the fire; curious that she, a
+stranger, should be the only one of them who cried!  He heard the
+quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames.  One more old Forsyte
+going to his long rest--wonderful, they were!--wonderful how he had
+held on!  His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on
+the sight of James' lips.  But Soames bent sideways over the feet,
+warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder though
+they grew.  Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful sound such
+as he had never heard, was coming from his father's lips, as if an
+outraged heart had broken with a long moan.  What a strong heart,
+to have uttered that farewell!  It ceased.  Soaines looked into the
+face.  No motion; no breath!  Dead!  He kissed the brow, turned
+round and went out of the room.  He ran upstairs to the bedroom,
+his old bedroom, still kept for him; flung himself face down on the
+bed, and broke into sobs which he stilled with the pillow....
+
+A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room.  James
+lay alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with the
+gravity on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the worn
+fine gravity of old coins.
+
+Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room
+with windows thrown open to the London night.
+
+"Good-bye!" he whispered, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HIS
+
+
+He had much to see to, that night and all next day.  A telegram at
+breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last
+train back to Reading, with Emily's kiss on his forehead and in his
+ears her words:
+
+"I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy."
+
+He reached his house at midnight.  The weather had changed, was
+mild again, as though, having finished its work and sent a Forsyte
+to his last account, it could relax.  A second telegram, received
+at dinner-time, had confirmed the good news of Annette, and,
+instead of going in, Soames passed down through the garden in the
+moonlight to his houseboat.  He could sleep there quite well.
+Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in his fur coat and fell
+asleep.  He woke soon after dawn and went on deck.  He stood
+against the rail, looking west where the river swept round in a
+wide curve under the woods.  In Soames, appreciation of natural
+beauty was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense of
+grievance if it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilised,
+by his researches among landscape painting.  But dawn has power to
+fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred.  It
+was another world from the river he knew, under that remote cool
+light; a world into which man had not entered, an unreal world,
+like some strange shore sighted by discovery.  Its colour was not
+the colour of convention, was hardly colour at all; its shapes were
+brooding yet distinct; its silence stunning; it had no scent.  Why
+it should move him he could not tell, unless it were that he felt
+so alone in it, bare of all relationship and all possessions.  Into
+such a world his father might be voyaging, for all resemblance it
+had to the world he had left.  And Soames took refuge from it in
+wondering what painter could have done it justice.  The white-grey
+water was like--like the belly of a fish!  Was it possible that
+this world on which he looked was all private property, except the
+water--and even that was tapped!  No tree, no shrub, not a blade of
+grass, not a bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned.
+And once on a time all this was jungle and marsh and water, and
+weird creatures roamed and sported without human cognizance to give
+them names; rotting luxuriance had rioted where those tall, care-
+fully planted woods came down to the water, and marsh-misted reeds
+on that far side had covered all the pasture.  Well! they had got
+it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it, and stowed it in
+lawyers' offices.  And a good thing too!  But once in a way, as
+now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and whisper
+to any human who chanced to be awake: 'Out of my unowned loneliness
+you all came, into it some day you will all return.'
+
+And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world-new
+to him and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of
+its past--went down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp.  When he
+had drunk it, he took out writing materials and wrote two
+paragraphs:
+
+"On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James Forsyte,
+in his ninety-first year.  Funeral at noon on the 24th at Highgate.
+No flowers by request."
+
+"On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife of
+Soames Forsyte, of a daughter."  And underneath on the
+blottingpaper he traced the word "son."
+
+It was eight o'clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went
+across to the house.  Bushes across the river stood round and
+bright-coloured out of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue
+and straight; and his doves cooed, preening their feathers in the
+sunlight.
+
+He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh
+linen and dark clothes.
+
+Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.
+
+She looked at his clothes, said, "Don't tell me!" and pressed his
+hand.  "Annette is prettee well.  But the doctor say she can never
+have no more children.  You knew that?" Soames nodded.  "It's a
+pity.  Mais la petite est adorable.  Du cafe?"
+
+Soames got away from her as soon as he could.  She offended him--
+solid, matter-of-fact, quick, clear--French.  He could not bear her
+vowels, her 'r's'; he resented the way she had looked at him, as if
+it were his fault that Annette could never bear him a son!  His
+fault!  He even resented her cheap adoration of the daughter he had
+not yet seen.
+
+Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!
+
+One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first moment.
+On the contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from it--
+fastidious possessor that he was.  He was afraid of what Annette
+was thinking of him, author of her agonies, afraid of the look of
+the baby, afraid of showing his disappointment with the present
+and--the future.
+
+He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he
+could screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the
+door of their room.
+
+Madame Lamotte opened it.
+
+"Ah!  At last you come!  Elle vous attend!"  She passed him, and
+Soames went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his
+eyes furtive.
+
+Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there.  The baby was
+hidden away somewhere; he could not see it.  He went up to the bed,
+and with sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.
+
+"Here you are then, Soames," she said.  "I am not so bad now.  But
+I suffered terribly, terribly.  I am glad I cannot have any more.
+Oh! how I suffered!"
+
+Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of
+sympathy, absolutely would not come; the thought passed through
+him: 'An English girl wouldn't have said that!'  At this moment he
+knew with certainty that he would never be near to her in spirit
+and in truth, nor she to him.  He had collected her--that was all!
+And Jolyon's words came rushing into his mind: "I should imagine
+you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."  Well, he had
+got it out!  Had he got it in again?
+
+"We must feed you up," he said, "you'll soon be strong."
+
+"Don't you want to see baby, Soames?  She is asleep."
+
+"Of course," said Soames, "very much."
+
+He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood
+staring.  For the first moment what he saw was much what he had
+expected to see--a baby.  But as he stared and the baby breathed
+and made little sleeping movements with its tiny features, it
+seemed to assume an individual shape, grew to be like a picture, a
+thing he would know again; not repulsive, strangely bud-like and
+touching.  It had dark hair.  He touched it with his finger, he
+wanted to see its eyes.  They opened, they were dark--whether blue
+or brown he could not tell.  The eyes winked, stared, they had a
+sort of sleepy depth in them.  And suddenly his heart felt queer,
+warm, as if elated.
+
+"Ma petite fleur!" Annette said softly.
+
+"Fleur," repeated Soames: "Fleur!  we'll call her that."
+
+The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.
+
+By God!  this--this thing was his!
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Indian Summer of a Forsyte
+by John Galsworthy
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Summer of a Forsyte and In Chancery
+by John Galsworthy
+#5 in our series by John Galsworthy
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Indian Summer of a Forsyte and In Chancery
+       Part 2 of the Forstye Saga
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: April, 2001 [EBook #2594]
+[This file was last updated on June 22, 2003]
+
+Edition: 12
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+With Proofing assistance from Fredrik Hausmann
+
+
+
+
+[Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's"; and
+"c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour and
+flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FORSYTE SAGA
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+VOLUME II
+
+Contents:
+     Indian Summer of a Forsyte
+     In Chancery
+
+
+
+TO ANDRE CHEVRILLON
+
+
+
+INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+      "And Summer's lease hath all
+                too short a date."
+                     --Shakespeare
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of
+the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the
+terrace of his house at Robin Hill.  He was waiting for the midges
+to bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon.  His
+thin brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of a
+cigar in its tapering, long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail
+had survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when to
+touch nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so
+distinguished.  His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean
+cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering sunshine
+by an old brown Panama hat.  His legs were crossed; in all his
+attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who
+every morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief.  At
+his feet lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a
+Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal
+aversion had changed into attachment with the years.  Close to his
+chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of Holly's dolls
+--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen over her legs and her
+doleful nose buried in a black petticoat.  She was never out of
+disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat.  Below the oak
+tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,
+beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the
+coppice, and the prospect--'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin
+Forsyte, from under this very tree, had stared five years ago when
+he drove down with Irene to look at the house.  Old Jolyon had
+heard of his brother's exploit--that drive which had become quite
+celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.  Swithin!  And the fellow had gone
+and died, last November, at the age of only seventy-nine, renewing
+the doubt whether Forsytes could live for ever, which had first
+arisen when Aunt Ann passed away.  Died! and left only Jolyon and
+James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester, Susan!  And
+old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except when I
+get that pain.'
+
+His memory went searching.  He had not felt his age since he had
+bought his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it
+here at Robin Hill over three years ago.  It was as if he had been
+getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son
+and his grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second
+marriage, Jolly and Holly; living down here out of the racket of
+London and the cackle of Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a
+delicious atmosphere of no work and all play, with plenty of
+occupation in the perfecting and mellowing of the house and its
+twenty acres, and in ministering to the whims of Holly and Jolly.
+All the knots and crankiness, which had gathered in his heart
+during that long and tragic business of June, Soames, Irene his
+wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.  Even June
+had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in Spain
+she was taking now with her father and her stepmother.  Curiously
+perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank,
+because his son was not there.  Jo was never anything but a comfort
+and a pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women,
+somehow--even the best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of
+course one admired them.
+
+Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first
+elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had
+sprung up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou'-
+west, too--a delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let
+the sun fall on his chin and cheek.  Somehow, to-day, he wanted
+company--wanted a pretty face to look at.  People treated the old as
+if they wanted nothing.  And with the un-Forsytean philosophy which
+ever intruded on his soul, he thought: 'One's never had enough.
+With a foot in the grave one'll want something, I shouldn't be
+surprised!'  Down here--away from the exigencies of affairs--his
+grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain,
+to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
+sesame,' to him day and night.  And sesame had opened--how much,
+perhaps, he did not know.  He had always been responsive to what
+they had begun to call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously
+responsive, though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset
+a sunset and a view a view, however deeply they might move him.
+But nowadays Nature actually made him ache, he appreciated it so.
+Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening days, with Holly's
+hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking studiously for
+what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses open,
+fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and
+saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and
+glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field;
+listening to the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows
+chewing the cud, flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of
+these fine days he ached a little from sheer love of it all,
+feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer to
+enjoy it.  The thought that some day--perhaps not ten years hence,
+perhaps not five--all this world would be taken away from him,
+before he had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in
+the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon.  If anything
+came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not Robin
+Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of
+those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had
+increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had
+worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off,
+leaving him reverent before three things alone--beauty, upright
+conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now
+was beauty.  He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could
+still read The Times, but he was liable at any moment to put it
+down if he heard a blackbird sing.  Upright conduct, property--
+somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never
+tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get
+enough of them.  Staring into the stilly radiance of the early
+evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a
+thought came to him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,'
+which he had recently heard at Covent Garden.  A beautiful opera,
+not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps
+even more lovely; something classical and of the Golden Age about
+it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old
+days'--highest praise he could bestow.  The yearning of Orpheus for
+the beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in
+life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang and throbbed
+through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of
+the world that evening.  And with the tip of his cork-soled,
+elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog
+Balthasar, causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for
+though he was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of
+the fact.  When he had finished he rubbed the place he had been
+scratching against his master's calf, and settled down again with
+his chin over the instep of the disturbing boot.  And into old
+Jolyon's mind came a sudden recollection--a face he had seen at
+that opera three weeks ago--Irene, the wife of his precious nephew
+Soames, that man of property! Though he had not met her since the
+day of  the 'At Home' in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which
+celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred engagement to young
+Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had always admired
+her--a very pretty creature.  After the death of young Bosinney,
+whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard that
+she had left Soames at once.  Goodness only knew what she had been
+doing since.  That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in
+front, had been literally the only reminder these three years that
+she was still alive.  No one ever spoke of her.  And yet Jo had
+told him something once--something which had upset him completely.
+The boy had got it from George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen
+Bosinney in the fog the day he was run over--something which
+explained the young fellow's distress--an act of Soames towards his
+wife--a shocking act.  Jo had seen her, too, that afternoon, after
+the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his description had
+always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he had called
+her.  And next day June had gone there--bottled up her feelings and
+gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her mistress
+had slipped out in the night and vanished.  A tragic business
+altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to
+lay hands on her again.  And he was living at Brighton, and
+journeying up and down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For
+when he once took a dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old
+Jolyon never got over it.  He remembered still the sense of relief
+with which he had heard the news of Irene's disappearance.  It had
+been shocking to think of her a prisoner in that house to which she
+must have wandered back, when Jo saw her, wandered back for a
+moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after seeing that news,
+'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street.  Her face had struck
+him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had remembered,
+but like a mask, with something going on beneath it.  A young
+woman still--twenty-eight perhaps.  Ah, well! Very likely she
+had another lover by now.  But at this subversive thought--for
+married women should never love: once, even, had been too much--his
+instep rose, and with it the dog Balthasar's head.  The sagacious
+animal stood up and looked into old Jolyon's face.  'Walk?' he
+seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered: "Come on, old chap!"
+
+Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of
+buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery.  This feature,
+where very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below
+the level of the lawn so that it might come up again on the level
+of the other lawn and give the impression of irregularity, so
+important in horticulture.  Its rocks and earth were beloved of the
+dog Balthasar, who sometimes found a mole there.  Old Jolyon made a
+point of passing through it because, though it was not beautiful,
+he intended that it should be, some day, and he would think: 'I
+must get Varr to come down and look at it; he's better than Beech.'
+For plants, like houses and human complaints, required the best
+expert consideration.  It was inhabited by snails, and if
+accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell
+them the story of the little boy who said: 'Have plummers got
+leggers, Mother?  'No, sonny.'  'Then darned if I haven't been and
+swallowed a snileybob.'  And when they skipped and clutched his
+hand, thinking of the snileybob going down the little boy's 'red
+lane,' his eyes would twinkle.  Emerging from the fernery, he
+opened the wicket gate, which just there led into the first field,
+a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick walls, the
+vegetable garden had been carved.  Old Jolyon avoided this, which
+did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.
+Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the
+gait which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day.
+Arrived at the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily
+opened since yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when
+'his little sweet' had got over the upset which had followed on her
+eating a tomato at lunch--her little arrangements were very
+delicate.  Now that Jolly had gone to school--his first term--Holly
+was with him nearly all day long, and he missed her badly.  He felt
+that pain too, which often bothered him now, a little dragging at
+his left side.  He looked back up the hill.  Really, poor young
+Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house; he would
+have done very well for himself if he had lived!  And where was he
+now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of
+his tragic love affair.  Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused
+in the general?  Who could say?  That dog was getting his legs
+muddy!  And he moved towards the coppice.  There had been the most
+delightful lot of bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered
+like little patches of sky fallen in between the trees, away out
+of the sun.  He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there
+installed, and pursued a path into the thick of the saplings,
+making for one of the bluebell plots.  Balthasar, preceding him
+once more, uttered a low growl.  Old Jolyon stirred him with his
+foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where there was no room
+to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of his woolly
+back.  Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's stivered
+hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old Jolyon
+also felt something move along his spine.  And then the path
+turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting.
+Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
+trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned.
+Powers above!  The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he
+had just been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things
+blurred, as if a spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight
+perhaps on her violet-grey frock! And then she rose and stood
+smiling, her head a little to one side.  Old Jolyon thought: 'How
+pretty she is!' She did not speak, neither did he; and he realized
+why with a certain admiration.  She was here no doubt because of
+some memory, and did not mean to try and get out of it by vulgar
+explanation.
+
+"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet.
+Come here, you!"
+
+But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand
+down and stroked his head.  Old Jolyon said quickly:
+
+"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."
+
+"Oh, yes! I did."
+
+He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you
+think one could miss seeing you?'
+
+"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly.  "I'm alone; I drove
+up for the opera.  The Ravogli's good.  Have you seen the cow-
+houses?"
+
+In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like
+emotion he moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and
+she moved beside him.  Her figure swayed faintly, like the best
+kind of French figures; her dress, too, was a sort of French grey.
+He noticed two or three silver threads in her amber-coloured hair,
+strange hair with those dark eyes of hers, and that creamy-pale
+face.  A sudden sidelong look from the velvety brown eyes disturbed
+him.  It seemed to come from deep and far, from another world
+almost, or at all events from some one not living very much in
+this.  And he said mechanically:
+
+"Where are you living now?"
+
+"I have a little flat in Chelsea."
+
+He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
+anything; but the perverse word came out:
+
+"Alone?"
+
+She nodded.  It was a relief to know that.  And it came into his
+mind that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of
+this coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.
+
+"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk.  This one's
+a pretty creature.  Woa, Myrtle!"
+
+The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own,
+was standing absolutely still, not having long been milked.  She
+looked round at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild,
+cynical eyes, and from her grey lips a little dribble of saliva
+threaded its way towards the straw.  The scent of hay and vanilla
+and ammonia rose in the dim light of the cool cow-house; and old
+Jolyon said:
+
+"You must come up and have some dinner with me.  I'll send you home
+in the carriage."
+
+He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt,
+with her memories.  But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a
+charming figure, beauty!  He had been alone all the afternoon.
+Perhaps his eyes were wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle
+Jolyon.  I should like to."
+
+He rubbed his hands, and said:
+
+"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar,
+they ascended through the field.  The sun was almost level in their
+faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but
+little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like
+fineness--the special look of life unshared with others.  "I'll
+take her in by the terrace," he thought: "I won't make a common
+visitor of her."
+
+"What do you do all day?" he said.
+
+"Teach music; I have another interest, too."
+
+"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing,
+and smoothing its black petticoat.  "Nothing like it, is there?  I
+don't do any now.  I'm getting on.  What interest is that?"
+
+"Trying to help women who've come to grief."  Old Jolyon did not
+quite understand.  "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a
+shock that she meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he
+had used that expression.  Assisting the Magdalenes of London!
+What a weird and terrifying interest!  And, curiosity overcoming
+his natural shrinking, he asked:
+
+"Why? What do you do for them?"
+
+"Not much.  I've no money to spare.  I can only give sympathy and
+food sometimes."
+
+Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse.  He said hastily:
+"How d'you get hold of them?"
+
+"I go to a hospital."
+
+"A hospital! Phew!"
+
+"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
+beauty."
+
+Old Jolyon straightened the doll.  "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha!
+Yes! A sad business!" and he moved towards the house.  Through a
+French window, under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her
+into the room where he was wont to study The Times and the sheets
+of an agricultural magazine, with huge illustrations of mangold
+wurzels, and the like, which provided Holly with material for her
+paint brush.
+
+"Dinner's in half an hour.  You'd like to wash your hands!  I'll
+take you to June's room."
+
+He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last
+visited this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps-
+-he did not know, could not say!  All that was dark, and he wished
+to leave it so.  But what changes!  And in the hall he said:
+
+"My boy Jo's a painter, you know.  He's got a lot of taste.  It
+isn't mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."
+
+She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and
+music room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great
+skylight.  Old Jolyon had an odd impression of her.  Was she trying
+to conjure somebody from the shades of that space where the
+colouring was all pearl-grey and silver? He would have had gold
+himself; more lively and solid.  But Jo had French tastes, and it
+had come out shadowy like that, with an effect as of the fume of
+cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and there by a
+little blaze of blue or crimson colour.  It was not his dream!
+Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces
+of still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity
+was precious.  And now where were they?  Sold for a song!  That
+something which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times
+had warned him against the struggle to retain them.  But in his
+study he still had 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'
+
+He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his
+side.
+
+"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements.  I've
+had them tiled.  The nurseries are along there.  And this is Jo's
+and his wife's.  They all communicate.  But you remember, I
+expect."
+
+Irene nodded.  They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large
+room with a small bed, and several windows.
+
+"This is mine," he said.  The walls were covered with the
+photographs of children and watercolour sketches, and he added
+doubtfully:
+
+"These are Jo's.  The view's first-rate.  You can see the Grand
+Stand at Epsom in clear weather."
+
+The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a
+luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous
+day.  Few houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened,
+away to a loom of downs.
+
+"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be
+when we're all gone.  Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet
+here in the mornings.  I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."
+
+Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its
+mournful look.  'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought.  'A
+pretty face, but sad!'  And taking up his can of hot water he went
+out into the gallery.
+
+"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting
+the can down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the
+door behind her he went back to his own room.  Brushing his hair
+with his great ebony brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de
+Cologne, he mused.  She had come so strangely--a sort of visit-
+ation; mysterious, even romantic, as if his desire for company, for
+beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was which fulfilled that
+sort of thing.  And before the mirror he straightened his still
+upright figure, passed the brushes over his great white moustache,
+touched up his eyebrows with eau de Cologne, and rang the bell.
+
+"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me.
+Let cook do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and
+pair at half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night.  Is Miss
+Holly asleep?"
+
+The maid thought not.  And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery,
+stole on tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose
+hinges he kept specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the
+evenings without being heard.
+
+But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that
+type which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they
+had completed her.  Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on
+her face was perfect peace--her little arrangements were evidently
+all right again.  And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room,
+stood adoring her!  It was so charming, solemn, and loving--that
+little face.  He had more than his share of the blessed capacity of
+living again in the young.  They were to him his future life--all
+of a future life that his fundamental pagan sanity perhaps
+admitted.  There she was with everything before her, and his
+blood--some of it--in her tiny veins.  There she was, his little
+companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that
+she knew nothing but love.  His heart swelled, and he went out,
+stilling the sound of his patent-leather boots.  In the corridor an
+eccentric notion attacked him: To think that children should come
+to that which Irene had told him she was helping!  Women who were
+all, once, little things like this one sleeping there!  'I must
+give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't bear to think of them!'  They
+had never borne reflecting on, those poor outcasts; wounding too
+deeply the core of true refinement hidden under layers of
+conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously the
+deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even
+now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society
+of a pretty woman.  And he went downstairs, through the swinging
+doors, to the back regions.  There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock
+worth at least two pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better
+than any Johannisberg that ever went down throat; a wine of
+perfect bouquet, sweet as a nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a
+bottle out, handling it like a baby, and holding it level to the
+light, to look.  Enshrined in its coat of dust, that mellow
+coloured, slender-necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.  Three
+years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to be in
+prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God
+he had kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it.  She
+would appreciate this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen.  He wiped
+the bottle, drew the cork with his own hands, put his nose down,
+inhaled its perfume, and went back to the music room.
+
+Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a
+lace scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was
+visible, and the pallor of her neck.  In her grey frock she made a
+pretty picture for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.
+
+He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went.  The room, which had
+been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held
+now but a little round table.  In his present solitude the big
+dining-table oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed
+till his son came back.  Here in the company of two really good
+copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone.  It was the
+only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather.  He had
+never been a large eater, like that great chap Swithin, or Sylvanus
+Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies of past times; and
+to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him but a
+sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might
+come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar.  But
+this evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her
+across the little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland,
+telling her stories of his travels there, and other experiences
+which he could no longer recount to his son and grand-daughter
+because they knew them.  This fresh audience was precious to him;
+he had never become one of those old men who ramble round and round
+the fields of reminiscence.  Himself quickly fatigued by the
+insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others, and his
+natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in his
+relations with a woman.  He would have liked to draw her out, but
+though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he
+told her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which
+constituted half her fascination.  He could not bear women who
+threw their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-
+mouthed women who laid down the law and knew more than you did.
+There was only one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm;
+and the quieter it was, the more he liked it.  And this one had
+charm, shadowy as afternoon sunlight on those Italian hills and
+valleys he had loved.  The feeling, too, that she was, as it were,
+apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to himself, a strangely
+desirable companion.  When a man is very old and quite out of the
+running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of youth, for
+he would still be first in the heart of beauty.  And he drank his
+hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young.  But the dog
+Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the
+interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish
+glasses full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.
+
+The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room.
+And, cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:
+
+"Play me some Chopin."
+
+By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall
+know the texture of men's souls.  Old Jolyon could not bear a
+strong cigar or Wagner's music.  He loved Beethoven and Mozart,
+Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the
+operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by
+Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli.  In
+yielding to these tastes he had been conscious of divergence from
+the standard of the Golden Age.  Their poetry was not that of
+Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and Titian; Mozart and
+Beethoven.  It was, as it were, behind a veil; their poetry hit no
+one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and turned
+and twisted, and melted up the heart.  And, never certain that this
+was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the
+pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.
+
+Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
+pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see
+her, crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar.  She sat a few
+moments with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind
+for what to give him.  Then she began and within old Jolyon there
+arose a sorrowful pleasure, not quite like anything else in the
+world.  He fell slowly into a trance, interrupted only by the
+movements of taking the cigar out of his mouth at long intervals,
+and replacing it.  She was there, and the hock within him, and the
+scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of sunshine lingering
+into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and bluish trees
+above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of lavender
+where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy, with
+dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and
+through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a
+cow's horn.  He opened his eyes.  Beautiful piece; she played well-
+-the touch of an angel!  And he closed them again.  He felt mirac-
+ulously sad and happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in
+full honey flower.  Not live one's own life again, but just stand
+there and bask in the smile of a woman's eyes, and enjoy the
+bouquet!  And he jerked his hand; the dog Balthasar had reached up
+and licked it.
+
+"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"
+
+She began to play again.  This time the resemblance between her and
+'Chopin' struck him.  The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in
+her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft
+darkness of her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a
+golden moon.  Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in
+that music.  A long blue spiral from his cigar ascended and
+dispersed.  'So we go out!' he thought.  'No more beauty! Nothing?'
+
+Again Irene stopped.
+
+"Would you like some Gluck?  He used to write his music in a sunlit
+garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."
+
+"Ah! yes.  Let's have 'Orfeo.'"  Round about him now were fields of
+gold and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight,
+bright birds flying to and fro.  All was summer.  Lingering waves
+of sweetness and regret flooded his soul.  Some cigar ash dropped,
+and taking out a silk handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a
+mingled scent as of snuff and eau de Cologne.  'Ah!' he thought,
+'Indian summer--that's all!' and he said: "You haven't played me
+'Che faro.'"
+
+She did not answer; did not move.  He was conscious of something--
+some strange upset.  Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a
+pang of remorse shot through him.  What a clumsy chap!  Like
+Orpheus, she of course--she too was looking for her lost one in the
+hall of memory!  And disturbed to the heart, he got up from his
+chair.  She had gone to the great window at the far end.  Gingerly
+he followed.  Her hands were folded over her breast; he could just
+see her cheek, very white.  And, quite emotionalized, he said:
+
+"There, there, my love!"  The words had escaped him mechanically,
+for they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their
+effect was instantaneously distressing.  She raised her arms,
+covered her face with them, and wept.
+
+Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age.  The
+passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike
+the control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had
+never before broken down in the presence of another being.
+
+"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out
+reverently, touched her.  She turned, and leaned the arms which
+covered her face against him.  Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping
+one thin hand on her shoulder.  Let her cry her heart out--it would
+do her good.
+
+And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine
+them.
+
+The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the
+last of daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the
+lamp within; there was a scent of new-mown grass.  With the wisdom
+of a long life old Jolyon did not speak.  Even grief sobbed itself
+out in time; only Time was good for sorrow--Time who saw the
+passing of each mood, each emotion in turn; Time the layer-to-rest.
+There came into his mind the words: 'As panteth the hart after
+cooling streams'--but they were of no use to him.  Then, conscious
+of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her eyes.  He put his
+chin forward, pressed his moustache against her forehead, and felt
+her shake with a quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which
+shakes itself free of raindrops.  She put his hand to her lips, as
+if saying: "All over now!  Forgive me!"
+
+The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to
+where she had been so upset.  And the dog Balthasar, following,
+laid the bone of one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.
+
+Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of
+nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet
+to cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and
+Chelsea, turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands,
+whose skin, faintly freckled, had such an aged look.
+
+"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds.
+It's very old.  That dog leaves his bones all over the place.  This
+old 'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the
+Marquis, came to grief.  But you don't remember.  Here's a nice
+piece of Chelsea.  Now, what would you say this was?"  And he was
+comforted, feeling that, with her taste, she was taking a real
+interest in these things; for, after all, nothing better composes
+the nerves than a doubtful piece of china.
+
+When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said:
+
+"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you
+these by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing.
+This dog seems to have taken a fancy to you."
+
+For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his
+side against her leg.  Going out under the porch with her, he said:
+
+"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter.  Take this for your
+protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand.
+He saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh! Uncle
+Jolyon!" and a real throb of pleasure went through him.  That meant
+one or two poor creatures helped a little, and it meant that she
+would come again.  He put his hand in at the window and grasped
+hers once more.  The carriage rolled away.  He stood looking at the
+moon and the shadows of the trees, and thought: 'A sweet night!
+She......!'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny.  Old Jolyon
+walked and talked with Holly.  At first he felt taller and full of
+a new vigour; then he felt restless.  Almost every afternoon they
+would enter the coppice, and walk as far as the log.  'Well, she's
+not there!' he would think, 'of course not!'  And he would feel a
+little shorter, and drag his feet walking up the hill home, with
+his hand clapped to his left side.  Now and then the thought would
+move in him: 'Did she come--or did I dream it?' and he would stare
+at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him.  Of course she
+would not come again!  He opened the letters from Spain with less
+excitement.  They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
+that he could bear it.  Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes
+and looked at where she had sat.  She was not there, so he
+unscrewed his eyes again.
+
+On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some
+boots.'  He ordered Beacon, and set out.  Passing from Putney
+towards Hyde Park he reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and
+see her.'  And he called out: "Just drive me to where you took that
+lady the other night."  The coachman turned his broad red face, and
+his juicy lips answered: "The lady in grey, sir?"
+
+"Yes, the lady in grey."  What other ladies were there!  Stodgy
+chap!
+
+The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
+standing a little back from the river.  With a practised eye old
+Jolyon saw that they were cheap.  'I should think about sixty pound
+a year,'  he mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board.  The
+name 'Forsyte' was not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C'
+were the words: 'Mrs. Irene Heron.'  Ah! She had taken her maiden
+name again!  And somehow this pleased him.  He went upstairs
+slowly, feeling his side a little.  He stood a moment, before
+ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and fluttering there.  She
+would not be in!  And then--Boots!  The thought was black.  What did
+he want with boots at his age? He could not wear out all those he
+had.
+
+"Your mistress at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
+
+"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"
+
+Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one
+would say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were
+drawn.  It held a cottage piano and little else save a vague
+fragrance and good taste.  He stood in the middle, with his top
+hat in his hand, and thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!'
+There was a mirror above the fireplace, and he saw himself
+reflected.  An old-looking chap!  He heard a rustle, and turned
+round.  She was so close that his moustache almost brushed her
+forehead, just under her hair.
+
+"I was driving up," he said.  "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask
+you how you got up the other night."
+
+And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved.  She was really
+glad to see him, perhaps.
+
+"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the
+Park?"
+
+But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned.  The Park!
+James and Emily!  Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his
+precious family would be there very likely, prancing up and down.
+And they would go and wag their tongues about having seen him with
+her, afterwards.  Better not!  He did not wish to revive the echoes
+of the past on Forsyte 'Change.  He removed a white hair from the
+lapel of his closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand
+over his cheeks, moustache, and square chin.  It felt very hollow
+there under the cheekbones.  He had not been eating much lately--he
+had better get that little whippersnapper who attended Holly to
+give him a tonic.  But she had come back and when they were in the
+carriage, he said:
+
+"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added
+with a twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been
+in the secret of his thoughts.
+
+Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and
+strolled towards the water.
+
+"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not
+sorry."
+
+She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle
+Jolyon?"
+
+He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"
+
+"And have you?"
+
+"I?  I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay."  And
+perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the
+beautiful.
+
+She drew a deep breath.  "I never regretted--I couldn't.  Did you
+ever love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"
+
+At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him.  Had he?  He
+did not seem to remember that he ever had.  But he did not like to
+say this to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose
+life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love.  And he
+thought: 'If I had met you when I was young I--I might have made a
+fool of myself, perhaps.'  And a longing to escape in generalities
+beset him.
+
+"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often.  It was the
+Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I
+dare say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."
+
+"Phil adored them."
+
+Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all
+round a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like
+this.  She wanted to talk about her lover!  Well!  If it was any
+pleasure to her!  And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor
+in him, I fancy."
+
+"Yes.  He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted
+way the Greeks gave themselves to art."
+
+Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
+symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes
+of his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?
+
+"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon."
+
+Old Jolyon looked round at her.  Was she chaffing him?  No, her
+eyes were soft as velvet.  Was she flattering him?  But if so, why?
+There was nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.
+
+"Phil thought so.  He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I
+admire him.'"
+
+Ah! There it was again.  Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him!
+And he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half
+grateful, as if he recognised what a link they were between herself
+and him.
+
+"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured.  "It's hot; I
+feel the heat nowadays.  Let's sit down."
+
+They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves
+covered them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon.  A pleasure
+to sit there and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him.
+And the wish to increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:
+
+"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw.  He'd be at his
+best with you.  His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had
+stiffed the word 'fangled.'
+
+"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty."  Old
+Jolyon thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle:
+"Well, I have, or I shouldn't be sitting here with you."  She was
+fascinating when she smiled with her eyes, like that!
+
+"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old.  Phil
+had real insight."
+
+He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of
+a longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was
+precious to hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which
+--quite true!--had never grown old.  Was that because--unlike her and
+her dead lover, he had never loved to desperation, had always kept
+his balance, his sense of symmetry.  Well! It had left him power,
+at eighty-four, to admire beauty.  And he thought, 'If I were a
+painter or a sculptor!  But I'm an old chap.  Make hay while the
+sun shines.'
+
+A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at
+the edge of the shadow from their tree.  The sunlight fell cruelly
+on their pale, squashed, unkempt young faces.  "We're an ugly lot!"
+said old Jolyon suddenly.  "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs
+over that."
+
+"Love triumphs over everything!"
+
+"The young think so," he muttered.
+
+"Love has no age, no limit, and no death."
+
+With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so
+large and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life!  But
+this extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he
+said: "Well, if it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George!
+it's got a lot to put up with."
+
+Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff.  The
+great clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got
+a rush of blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had
+been.
+
+She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she
+murmured:
+
+"It's strange enough that I'm alive."
+
+Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.
+
+"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."
+
+"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a
+second it was--Phil."
+
+Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble.  She put her hand over them, took
+it away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the
+Embankment; a woman caught me by the dress.  She told me about
+herself.  When one knows that others suffer, one's ashamed."
+
+"One of those?"
+
+She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one
+who has never known a struggle with desperation.  Almost against
+his will he muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"
+
+"I didn't care whether I lived or died.  When you're like that,
+Fate ceases to want to kill you.  She took care of me three days--
+she never left me.  I had no money.  That's why I do what I can for
+them, now."
+
+But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!'  What fate could compare
+with that?  Every other was involved in it.
+
+"I wish you had come to me," he said.  "Why didn't you?"  But Irene
+did not answer.
+
+"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose?  Or was it June who kept
+you away?  How are you getting on now?"  His eyes involuntarily
+swept her body.  Perhaps even now she was--!  And yet she wasn't
+thin--not really!
+
+"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough."  The answer
+did not reassure him; he had lost confidence.  And that fellow
+Soames!  But his sense of justice stifled condemnation.  No, she
+would certainly have died rather than take another penny from him.
+Soft as she looked, there must be strength in her somewhere--
+strength and fidelity.  But what business had young Bosinney to
+have got run over and left her stranded like this!
+
+"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want,
+or I shall be quite cut up."  And putting on his hat, he rose.
+"Let's go and get some tea.  I told that lazy chap to put the
+horses up for an hour, and come for me at your place.  We'll take a
+cab presently; I can't walk as I used to."
+
+He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the
+sound of her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of
+a charming form moving beside him.  He enjoyed their tea at
+Ruffel's in the High Street, and came out thence with a great box
+of chocolates swung on his little finger.  He enjoyed the drive
+back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his cigar.  She had promised
+to come down next Sunday and play to him again, and already in
+thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her to carry
+back to town.  It was a pleasure to give her a little pleasure, if
+it WERE pleasure from an old chap like him!  The carriage was
+already there when they arrived.  Just like that fellow, who was
+always late when he was wanted!  Old Jolyon went in for a minute to
+say good-bye.  The little dark hall of the flat was impregnated
+with a disagreeable odour of patchouli, and on a bench against the
+wall--its only furniture--he saw a figure sitting.  He heard Irene
+say softly: "Just one minute."  In the little drawing-room when the
+door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of your protegees?"
+
+"Yes.  Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."
+
+He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had
+frightened so many in its time.  The idea of her thus actually in
+contact with this outcast grieved and frightened him.  What could
+she do for them?  Nothing.  Only soil and make trouble for herself,
+perhaps.  And he said: "Take care, my dear!  The world puts the
+worst construction on everything."
+
+"I know that."
+
+He was abashed by her quiet smile.  "Well then--Sunday," he
+murmured: "Good-bye."
+
+She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.
+
+"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself."  And he went
+out, not looking towards the figure on the bench.  He drove home by
+way of Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and
+tell them to send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy.  She
+must want picking-up sometimes!  Only in Richmond Park did he
+remember that he had gone up to order himself some boots, and was
+surprised that he could have had so paltry an idea.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had
+never pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy
+hours elapsing before Sunday came.  The spirit of the future, with
+the charm of the unknown, put up her lips instead.  Old Jolyon was
+not restless now, and paid no visits to the log, because she was
+coming to lunch.  There is wonderful finality about a meal; it
+removes a world of doubts, for no one misses meals except for
+reasons beyond control.  He played many games with Holly on the
+lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to be ready to
+bowl to Jolly in the holidays.  For she was not a Forsyte, but
+Jolly was--and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
+reached the age of eighty-five.  The dog Balthasar, in attendance,
+lay on the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded,
+till his face was like the harvest moon.  And because the time was
+getting shorter, each day was longer and more golden than the last.
+On Friday night he took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and
+though it was not the liver side, there is no remedy like that.
+Anyone telling him that he had found a new excitement in life and
+that excitement was not good for him, would have been met by one of
+those steady and rather defiant looks of his deep-set iron-grey
+eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own business best.'  He
+always had and always would.
+
+On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to
+church, he visited the strawberry beds.  There, accompanied by the
+dog Balthasar, he examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in
+finding at least two dozen berries which were really ripe.
+Stooping was not good for him, and he became very dizzy and red in
+the forehead.  Having placed the strawberries in a dish on the
+dining-table, he washed his hands and bathed his forehead with eau
+de Cologne.  There, before the mirror, it occurred to him that he
+was thinner.  What a 'threadpaper' he had been when he was young!
+It was nice to be slim--he could not bear a fat chap; and yet
+perhaps his cheeks were too thin!  She was to arrive by train at
+half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road past Drage's
+farm at the far end of the coppice.  And, having looked into June's
+room to see that there was hot water ready, he set forth to meet
+her, leisurely, for his heart was beating.  The air smelled sweet,
+larks sang, and the Grand Stand at Epsom was visible.  A perfect
+day!  On just such a one, no doubt, six years ago, Soames had
+brought young Bosinney down with him to look at the site before
+they began to build.  It was Bosinney who had pitched on the exact
+spot for the house--as June had often told him.  In these days he
+was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit were
+really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of
+seeing--her.  Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart, to
+whom she had given her whole self with rapture!  At his age one
+could not, of course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him
+a queer vague aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal
+jealousy; and a feeling, too, more generous, of pity for that love
+so early lost.  All over in a few poor months!  Well, well!  He
+looked at his watch before entering the coppice--only a quarter
+past, twenty-five minutes to wait!  And then, turning the corner of
+the path, he saw her exactly where he had seen her the first time,
+on the log; and realised that she must have come by the earlier
+train to sit there alone for a couple of hours at least.  Two hours
+of her society missed!  What memory could make that log so dear to
+her?  His face showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:
+
+"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."
+
+"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like.  You're looking a
+little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."
+
+That she should have to give lessons worried him.  Lessons to a
+parcel of young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.
+
+"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.
+
+"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."
+
+Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.
+
+"They love music, and they're very kind."
+
+"They had better be, by George!"  He took her arm--his side always
+hurt him a little going uphill--and said:
+
+"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups?  They came like
+that in a night."
+
+Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the
+flowers and the honey.  "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let
+them turn the cows in yet."  Then, remembering that she had come to
+talk about Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the
+stables:
+
+"I expect he wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of
+time, if I remember."
+
+But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he
+knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of her
+dead lover.
+
+"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph,
+"is my little sweet.  She'll be back from Church directly.  There's
+something about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did
+not seem to him peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of
+saying: "There's something about you which reminds me a little of
+her."  Ah! And here she was!
+
+Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose
+digestion had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of
+Strasbourg, came rushing towards them from under the oak tree.  She
+stopped about a dozen yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that
+this was all she had in her mind.  Old Jolyon, who knew better,
+said:
+
+"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."
+
+Holly raised herself and looked up.  He watched the two of them
+with a twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry,
+passing into a shy smile too, and then to something deeper.  She
+had a sense of beauty, that child--knew what was what!  He enjoyed
+the sight of the kiss between them.
+
+"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce.  Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"
+
+For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part
+of the service connected with this world absorbed what interest in
+church remained to him.  Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery
+hand clad in a black kid glove--she had been in the best families--
+and the rather sad eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask:
+"Are you well-brrred?" Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything
+unpleasing to her--a not uncommon occurrence--she would say to them:
+"The little Tayleurs never did that--they were such well-brrred
+little children."  Jolly hated the little Tayleurs; Holly wondered
+dreadfully how it was she fell so short of them.  'A thin rum
+little soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle Beauce.
+
+Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had
+picked in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another
+bottle of the Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic
+spirituality, and a conviction that he would have a touch of eczema
+to-morrow.
+
+After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee.
+It was no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew
+to write her Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been
+endangered in the past by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily
+in warning to the children to eat slowly and digest what they had
+eaten.  At the foot of the bank, on a carriage rug, Holly and the
+dog Balthasar teased and loved each other, and in the shade old
+Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar luxuriously savoured,
+gazed at Irene sitting in the swing.  A light, vaguely swaying,
+grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon it, lips
+just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped.  She
+looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him!  The
+selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could
+still feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what
+he wanted, though much, was not quite all that mattered.
+
+"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it
+dull.  But it's a pleasure to see you.  My little sweet is the
+only face which gives me any pleasure, except yours."
+
+From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be
+appreciated, and this reassured him.  "That's not humbug," he said.
+"I never told a woman I admired her when I didn't.  In fact I
+don't know when I've told a woman I admired her, except my wife in
+the old days; and wives are funny."  He was silent, but resumed
+abruptly:
+
+"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and
+there we were."  Her face looked mysteriously troubled, and,
+afraid that he had said something painful, he hurried on: "When my
+little sweet marries, I hope she'll find someone who knows what
+women feel.  I shan't be here to see it, but there's too much
+topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her to pitch up against
+that."  And, aware that he had made bad worse, he added: "That dog
+will scratch."
+
+A silence followed.  Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature
+whose life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made
+for love?  Some day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find
+another mate--not so disorderly as that young fellow who had got
+himself run over.  Ah! but her husband?
+
+"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.  Her face had closed up suddenly.  For all her
+softness there was something irreconcilable about her.  And a
+glimpse of light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies
+strayed into a brain which, belonging to early Victorian civil-
+isation--so much older than this of his old age--had never thought
+about such primitive things.
+
+"That's a comfort," he said.  "You can see the Grand Stand to-day.
+Shall we take a turn round?"
+
+Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls
+peach trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the
+stables, the vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the
+rosery, the summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen
+garden to see the tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of
+their pods with her finger, and lick up from the palm of her little
+brown hand.  Many delightful things he showed her, while Holly and
+the dog Balthasar danced ahead, or came to them at intervals for
+attention.  It was one of the happiest afternoons he had ever
+spent, but it tired him and he was glad to sit down in the music
+room and let her give him tea.  A special little friend of Holly's
+had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.  And the
+two sported in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and
+up in the gallery.  Old Jolyon begged for Chopin.  She played
+studies, mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near,
+stood at the foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent
+forward, listening.  Old Jolyon watched.
+
+"Let's see you dance, you two!"
+
+Shyly, with a false start, they began.  Bobbing and circling,
+earnest, not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the
+strains of that waltz.  He watched them and the face of her who was
+playing turned smiling towards those little dancers thinking:
+
+'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'
+
+A voice said:
+
+"Hollee! Mais enfin--qu'est-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!
+Viens, donc!"
+
+But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would
+save them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'
+
+"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle.  It's all my doing.
+Trot along, chicks, and have your tea."
+
+And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took
+every meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:
+
+"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones
+among your pupils?"
+
+"Yes, three--two of them darlings."
+
+"Pretty?"
+
+"Lovely!"
+
+Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very
+young.  "My little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be
+a musician some day.  You wouldn't give me your opinion of her
+playing, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her
+lessons."  The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him;
+yet it would mean that he would see her regularly.  She left the
+piano and came over to his chair.
+
+"I would like, very much; but there is--June.  When are they coming
+back?"
+
+Old Jolyon frowned.  "Not till the middle of next month.  What does
+that matter?"
+
+"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
+Jolyon."
+
+Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.
+
+But as if answering, Irene shook her head.  "You know she couldn't;
+one doesn't forget."
+
+Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed
+finality:
+
+"Well, we shall see."
+
+He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred
+little things, till the carriage came round to take her home.  And
+when she had gone he went back to his chair, and sat there
+smoothing his face and chin, dreaming over the day.
+
+That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of
+paper.  He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and
+stood under the masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'  He
+was not thinking of that picture, but of his life.  He was going to
+leave her something in his Will; nothing could so have stirred the
+stilly deeps of thought and memory.  He was going to leave her a
+portion of his wealth, of his aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--
+all that had made that wealth; going to leave her, too, a part of
+all he had missed in life, by his sane and steady pursuit of
+wealth.  All! What had he missed?  'Dutch Fishing Boats' responded
+blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing the curtain
+aside, opened it.  A wind had got up, and one of last year's oak
+leaves which had somehow survived the gardener's brooms, was
+dragging itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace
+in the twilight.  Except for that it was very quiet out there, and
+he could smell the heliotrope watered not long since.  A bat went
+by.  A bird uttered its last 'cheep.'  And right above the oak tree
+the first star shone.  Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for
+some fresh years of youth.  Morbid notion!  No such bargain was
+possible, that was real tragedy! No making oneself new again for
+love or life or anything.  Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from
+afar off while you could, and leave it something in your Will.  But
+how much? And, as if he could not make that calculation looking out
+into the mild freedom of the country night, he turned back and went
+up to the chimney-piece.  There were his pet bronzes--a Cleopatra
+with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a greyhound playing with
+her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.  'They last!' he
+thought, and a pang went through his heart.  They had a thousand
+years of life before them!
+
+'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old
+before her time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as
+possible, and grey from soiling that bright hair.  He might live
+another five years.  She would be well over thirty by then.  'How
+much?'  She had none of his blood in her!  In loyalty to the tenor
+of his life for forty years and more, ever since he married and
+founded that mysterious thing, a family, came this warning thought-
+-None of his blood, no right to anything!  It was a luxury then,
+this notion.  An extravagance, a petting of an old man's whim, one
+of those things done in dotage.  His real future was vested in
+those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was gone.
+He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
+leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of
+cigars.  And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her
+grey dress, fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him.
+Why! She cared nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that
+lost lover of hers.  But she was there, whether she would or no,
+giving him pleasure with her beauty and grace.  One had no right to
+inflict an old man's company, no right to ask her down to play to
+him and let him look at her--for no reward!  Pleasure must be paid
+for in this world.  'How much?'  After all, there was plenty; his
+son and his three grandchildren would never miss that little lump.
+He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he could leave it where
+he liked, allow himself this little pleasure.  He went back to the
+bureau.  'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them think what
+they like.  I'm going to!'  And he sat down.
+
+'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with
+his money he could buy one year, one month of youth.  And startled
+by that thought, he wrote quickly:
+
+
+'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my
+niece Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes,
+fifteen thousand pounds free of legacy duty."
+'Yours faithfully,
+'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
+
+
+When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the
+window and drew in a long breath.  It was dark, but many stars
+shone now.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught
+him brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts.  Experience had
+also taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight
+showed the folly of such panic.  On this particular morning the
+thought which gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at
+his age not improbable, he would not see her.  From this it was but
+a step to realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son
+and June returned from Spain.  How could he justify desire for the
+company of one who had stolen--early morning does not mince words--
+June's lover?  That lover was dead; but June was a stubborn little
+thing; warm-hearted, but stubborn as wood, and--quite true--not one
+who forgot!  By the middle of next month they would be back.  He
+had barely five weeks left to enjoy the new interest which had come
+into what remained of his life.  Darkness showed up to him absurdly
+clear the nature of his feeling.  Admiration for beauty--a craving
+to see that which delighted his eyes.
+
+Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for
+asking June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his
+son and his son's wife from thinking him very queer?  He would be
+reduced to sneaking up to London, which tired him; and the least
+indisposition would cut him off even from that.  He lay with eyes
+open, setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself an
+old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop
+beating altogether.  He had seen the dawn lighting the window
+chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow,
+before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane.  Five weeks
+before he need bother, at his age an eternity!  But that early
+morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of
+one who had always had his own way.  He would see her as often as
+he wished!  Why not go up to town and make that codicil at his
+solicitor's instead of writing about it; she might like to go to
+the opera!  But, by train, for he would not have that fat chap
+Beacon grinning behind his back.  Servants were such fools; and, as
+likely as not, they had known all the past history of Irene and
+young Bosinney--servants knew everything, and suspected the rest.
+He wrote to her that morning:
+
+
+"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow.  If you
+would like to have a look in at the opera, come and dine
+with me quietly ...."
+
+But where?  It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London
+save at his Club or at a private house.  Ah! that new-fangled place
+close to Covent Garden....
+
+"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether
+to expect you there at 7 o'clock."
+"Yours affectionately,
+"JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+
+She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little
+pleasure; for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to
+see her was instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that
+one so old should go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a
+woman.
+
+The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his
+lawyer's, tired him.  It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner
+he lay down on the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little.  He must
+have had a sort of fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling
+very queer; and with some difficulty rose and rang the bell.  Why!
+it was past seven!  And there he was and she would be waiting.  But
+suddenly the dizziness came on again, and he was obliged to relapse
+on the sofa.  He heard the maid's voice say:
+
+"Did you ring, sir?"
+
+"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in
+front of his eyes.  "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."
+
+"Yes, sir."  Her voice sounded frightened.
+
+Old Jolyon made an effort.
+
+"Don't go.  Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the
+hall--a lady in grey.  Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat.  He
+is very sorry; if he is not down directly, she is not to wait
+dinner."
+
+When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in
+grey--she may be in anything.  Sal volatile!'  He did not go off
+again, yet was not conscious of how Irene came to be standing
+beside him, holding smelling salts to his nose, and pushing a
+pillow up behind his head.  He heard her say anxiously: "Dear Uncle
+Jolyon, what is it?" was dimly conscious of the soft pressure of
+her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of smelling salts,
+suddenly discovered strength in them, and sneezed.
+
+"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing.  How did you get here? Go down and
+dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table.  I shall be all right
+in a minute."
+
+He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat
+divided between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all
+right.
+
+"Why! You are in grey!" he said.  "Help me up."  Once on his feet
+he gave himself a shake.
+
+"What business had I to go off like that!"  And he moved very
+slowly to the glass.  What a cadaverous chap!  Her voice, behind
+him, murmured:
+
+"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!  A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights.  I
+can't have you missing the opera."
+
+But the journey down the corridor was troublesome.  What carpets
+they had in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up
+in them at every step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she
+looked, and said with the ghost of a twinkle:
+
+"I'm a pretty host."
+
+When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent
+its slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he
+felt much better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought
+such solicitude into her manner towards him.
+
+"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and
+watching the smile in her eyes, went on:
+
+"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life;
+plenty of that when you get to my age.  That's a nice dress--I like
+the style."
+
+"I made it myself."
+
+Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her
+interest in life.
+
+"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up.  I
+want to see some colour in your cheeks.  We mustn't waste life; it
+doesn't do.  There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she
+won't be fat.  And Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap
+playing the Devil I can't imagine."
+
+But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from
+dinner the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his
+staying quiet and going to bed early.  When he parted from her at
+the door of the hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to
+Chelsea, he sat down again for a moment to enjoy the memory of her
+words: "You are such a darling to me, Uncle Jolyon!"  Why! Who
+wouldn't be!  He would have liked to stay up another day and take
+her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would bore her to
+death.  No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised to come
+then.  They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a
+month.  It would be something.  That little Mam'zelle Beauce
+wouldn't like it, but she would have to lump it.  And crushing his
+old opera hat against his chest he sought the lift.
+
+He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:
+'Drive me to Chelsea.'  But his sense of proportion was too strong.
+Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another
+aberration like that of last night, away from home.  Holly, too,
+was expecting him, and what he had in his bag for her.  Not that
+there was any cupboard love in his little sweet--she was a bundle
+of affection.  Then, with the rather bitter cynicism of the old, he
+wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard love which made
+Irene put up with him.  No, she was not that sort either.  She had,
+if anything, too little notion of how to butter her bread, no sense
+of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not breathed a word about
+that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the day was the good
+thereof.
+
+In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining
+the dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home.
+All the rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was
+content and peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long
+lingering sunshine showered gold on the lawns and the flowers.  But
+on Thursday evening at his lonely dinner he began to count the
+hours; sixty-five till he would go down to meet her again in the
+little coppice, and walk up through the fields at her side.  He had
+intended to consult the doctor about his fainting fit, but the
+fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no excitement and all
+that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did not want to be
+told of an infirmity--if there were one, could not afford to hear
+of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.
+And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to
+his son.  It would only bring them back with a run!  How far this
+silence was due to consideration for their pleasure, how far to
+regard for his own, he did not pause to consider.
+
+That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was
+dozing off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious
+of a scent of violets.  Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in
+grey, standing by the fireplace, holding out her arms.  The odd
+thing was that, though those arms seemed to hold nothing, they were
+curved as if round someone's neck, and her own neck was bent back,
+her lips open, her eyes closed.  She vanished at once, and there
+were the mantelpiece and his bronzes.  But those bronzes and the
+mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only the fireplace and
+the wall!  Shaken and troubled, he got up.  'I must take medicine,'
+he thought; 'I can't be well.'  His heart beat too fast, he had an
+asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he opened
+it to get some air.  A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs at
+Gage's farm no doubt, beyond the coppice.  A beautiful still night,
+but dark.  'I dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it!  And yet I'll
+swear my eyes were open!'  A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.
+
+"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"
+
+Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he
+stepped out on the terrace.  Something soft scurried by in the
+dark.  "Shoo!"  It was that great grey cat.  'Young Bosinney was
+like a great cat!' he thought.  'It was him in there, that she--
+that she was--He's got her still!'  He walked to the edge of the
+terrace, and looked down into the darkness; he could just see the
+powdering of the daisies on the unmown lawn.  Here to-day and gone
+to-morrow!  And there came the moon, who saw all, young and old,
+alive and dead, and didn't care a dump!  His own turn soon.  For a
+single day of youth he would give what was left!  And he turned
+again towards the house.  He could see the windows of the night
+nursery up there.  His little sweet would be asleep.  'Hope that
+dog won't wake her!' he thought.  'What is it makes us love, and
+makes us die!  I must go to bed.'
+
+And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he
+passed back within.
+
+How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his
+well-spent past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating
+warmth, only pale winter sunshine.  The shell can withstand the
+gentle beating of the dynamos of memory.  The present he should
+distrust; the future shun.  From beneath thick shade he should
+watch the sunlight creeping at his toes.  If there be sun of
+summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking it for the
+Indian-summer sun!  Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,
+slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his
+wind-pipe and he gasps away to death some early morning before the
+world is aired, and they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of
+years!' yea!  If he preserve his principles in perfect order, a
+Forsyte may live on long after he is dead.
+
+Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that
+which transcended Forsyteism.  For it is written that a Forsyte
+shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than
+his own health.  And something beat within him in these days that
+with each throb fretted at the thinning shell.  His sagacity knew
+this, but it knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor
+would if he could.  And yet, if you had told him he was living on
+his capital, he would have stared you down.  No, no; a man did not
+live on his capital; it was not done!  The shibboleths of the past
+are ever more real than the actualities of the present.  And he, to
+whom living on one's capital had always been anathema, could not
+have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his own case.
+Pleasure is healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the
+youth of the young--and what else on earth was he doing!
+
+Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now
+arranged his time.  On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train;
+Irene came and dined with him.  And they went to the opera.  On
+Thursdays he drove to town, and, putting that fat chap and his
+horses up, met her in Kensington Gardens, picking up the carriage
+after he had left her, and driving home again in time for dinner.
+He threw out the casual formula that he had business in London on
+those two days.  On Wednesdays and Saturdays she came down to give
+Holly music lessons.  The greater the pleasure he took in her
+society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a matter-
+of-fact and friendly uncle.  Not even in feeling, really, was he
+more--for, after all, there was his age.  And yet, if she were late
+he fidgeted himself to death.  If she missed coming, which happened
+twice, his eyes grew sad as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.
+
+And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his
+heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof.  Who could have
+believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his
+son's and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread!
+There was such a delicious freedom, such recovery of that
+independence a man enjoys before he founds a family, about these
+weeks of lovely weather, and this new companionship with one who
+demanded nothing, and remained always a little unknown, retaining
+the fascination of mystery.  It was like a draught of wine to him
+who has been drinking water for so long that he has almost
+forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to his
+brain.  The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and
+the sunlight had a living value--were no longer mere reminders of
+past enjoyment.  There was something now to live for which stirred
+him continually to anticipation.  He lived in that, not in
+retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as he.
+The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one
+naturally abstemious, had lost all value.  He ate little, without
+knowing what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to
+look at.  He was again a 'threadpaper'; and to this thinned form
+his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more
+dignity than ever.  He was very well aware that he ought to see the
+doctor, but liberty was too sweet.  He could not afford to pet his
+frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the
+expense of liberty.  Return to the vegetable existence he had led
+among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels,
+before this new attraction came into his life--no! He exceeded his
+allowance of cigars.  Two a day had always been his rule.  Now he
+smoked three and sometimes four--a man will when he is filled with
+the creative spirit.  But very often he thought: 'I must give up
+smoking, and coffee; I must give up rattling up to town.'  But he
+did not; there was no one in any sort of authority to notice him,
+and this was a priceless boon.
+
+The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb.
+Mam'zelle Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too
+'wellbrrred' to make personal allusions.  Holly had not as yet an
+eye for the relative appearance of him who was her plaything and
+her god.  It was left for Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to
+rest in the hot part of the day, to take a tonic, and so forth.
+But she did not tell him that she was the a cause of his thinness--
+for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working.  A man of eighty-
+five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces passion works
+on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which crave the sight
+of Her.
+
+On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter
+from his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday.
+This had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic
+improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he
+had never quite admitted it.  Now he did, and something would have
+to be done.  He had ceased to be able to imagine life without this
+new interest, but that which is not imagined sometimes exists, as
+Forsytes are perpetually finding to their cost.  He sat in his old
+leather chair, doubling up the letter, and mumbling with his lips
+the end of an unlighted cigar.  After to-morrow his Tuesday
+expeditions to town would have to be abandoned.  He could still
+drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his man of
+business.  But even that would be dependent on his health, for now
+they would begin to fuss about him.  The lessons!  The lessons must
+go on!  She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her
+feelings in her pocket.  She had done so once, on the day after the
+news of Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely
+do again now.  Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--
+not Christian to keep the memory of old sores alive.  June's will
+was strong, but his was stronger, for his sands were running out.
+Irene was soft, surely she would do this for him, subdue her
+natural shrinking, sooner than give him pain!  The lessons must
+continue; for if they did, he was secure.  And lighting his cigar
+at last, he began trying to shape out how to put it to them all,
+and explain this strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away
+from the naked truth--that he could not bear to be deprived of the
+sight of beauty.  Ah! Holly!  Holly was fond of her, Holly liked
+her lessons.  She would save him--his little sweet!  And with that
+happy thought he became serene, and wondered what he had been
+worrying about so fearfully.  He must not worry, it left him always
+curiously weak, and as if but half present in his own body.
+
+That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though
+he did not faint.  He would not ring the bell, because he knew it
+would mean a fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more
+conspicuous.  When one grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy
+to limit freedom, and for what reason?--just to keep the breath in
+him a little longer.  He did not want it at such cost.  Only the
+dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery from that weakness; anxiously
+watched his master go to the sideboard and drink some brandy,
+instead of giving him a biscuit.  When at last old Jolyon felt able
+to tackle the stairs he went up to bed.  And, though still shaky
+next morning, the thought of the evening sustained and strengthened
+him.  It was always such a pleasure to give her a good dinner--he
+suspected her of undereating when she was alone; and, at the opera
+to watch her eyes glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her
+lips.  She hadn't much pleasure, and this was the last time he
+would be able to give her that treat.  But when he was packing his
+bag he caught himself wishing that he had not the fatigue of
+dressing for dinner before him, and the exertion, too, of telling
+her about June's return.
+
+The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last
+entr'acte to break the news, instinctively putting it off till the
+latest moment.
+
+She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had
+taken it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence
+became necessary.  The mask was down over her face, that mask
+behind which so much went on that he could not see.  She wanted
+time to think it over, no doubt!  He would not press her, for she
+would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow afternoon, and he
+should see her then when she had got used to the idea.  In the cab
+he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old days,
+but this one was not bad at all.  When he took her hand to say
+good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.
+
+"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."
+
+"To-morrow then," he said.  "Good-night.  Sleep well."  She echoed
+softly: "Sleep welll" and from the cab window, already moving away,
+he saw her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in
+a gesture which seemed to linger.
+
+He sought his room slowly.  They never gave him the same, and he
+could not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new
+furniture and grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink
+roses.  He was wakeful and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in
+his head.
+
+His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he
+knew, if it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable.
+Well, there was in life something which upset all your care and
+plans--something which made men and women dance to its pipes.  And
+he lay staring from deep-sunk eyes into the darkness where the
+unaccountable held sway.  You thought you had hold of life, but it
+slipped away behind you, took you by the scruff of the neck, forced
+you here and forced you there, and then, likely as not, squeezed
+life out of you!  It took the very stars like that, he shouldn't
+wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them apart; it had
+never done playing its pranks.  Five million people in this great
+blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that Life-
+Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board
+when you struck your fist on it.  Ah, well! Himself would not hop
+much longer--a good long sleep would do him good!
+
+How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had
+kissed it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had
+known the very place and wanted to kiss it all away for him.  But,
+instead, her lips left a patch of grievous uneasiness.  She had
+never spoken in quite that voice, had never before made that
+lingering gesture or looked back at him as she drove away.
+
+He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced
+down over the river.  There was little air, but the sight of that
+breadth of water flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him.  'The
+great thing,' he thought 'is not to make myself a nuisance.  I'll
+think of my little sweet, and go to sleep.'  But it was long before
+the heat and throbbing of the London night died out into the short
+slumber of the summer morning.  And old Jolyon had but forty winks.
+
+When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and
+with the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers,
+gathered a great bunch of carnations.  They were, he told her, for
+'the lady in grey'--a name still bandied between them; and he put
+them in a bowl in his study where he meant to tackle Irene the
+moment she came, on the subject of June and future lessons.  Their
+fragrance and colour would help.  After lunch he lay down, for he
+felt very tired, and the carriage would not bring her from the
+station till four o'clock.  But as the hour approached he grew
+restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.
+The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle
+Beauce, sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending
+to their silkworms.  Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these
+methodical creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of
+elephants; who nibbled such quantities of holes in nice green
+leaves; and smelled, as he thought, horrid.  He sat down on a
+chintz-covered windowseat whence he could see the drive, and get
+what air there was; and the dog Balthasar who appreciated chintz on
+hot days, jumped up beside him.  Over the cottage piano a violet
+dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and on it the first
+lavender, whose scent filled the room.  In spite of the coolness
+here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life vehemently
+impressed his ebbed-down senses.  Each sunbeam which came through
+the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong;
+the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up
+their grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head
+bent over them had a wonderfully silky sheen.  A marvellous cruelly
+strong thing was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock
+you with its multitude of forms and its beating vitality.  He had
+never, till those last few weeks, had this curious feeling of being
+with one half of him eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and
+with the other half left on the bank, watching that helpless
+progress.  Only when Irene was with him did he lose this double
+consciousness.
+
+Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
+piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said
+slyly:
+
+"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"
+
+Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was
+clouded; then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:
+
+"Who's been dressing her up?"
+
+"Mam'zelle."
+
+"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"
+
+That prim little Frenchwoman!  She hadn't yet got over the music
+lessons being taken away from her.  That wouldn't help.  His little
+sweet was the only friend they had.  Well, they were her lessons.
+And he shouldn't budge shouldn't budge for anything.  He stroked
+the warm wool on Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When
+mother's home, there won't be any changes, will there?  She doesn't
+like strangers, you know."
+
+The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of
+opposition about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his
+new-found freedom.  Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an
+old man at the mercy of care and love, or fight to keep this new
+and prized companionship; and to fight tired him to death.  But his
+thin, worn face hardened into resolution till it appeared all Jaw.
+This was his house, and his affair; he should not budge!  He looked
+at his watch, old and thin like himself; he had owned it fifty
+years.  Past four already!  And kissing the top of Holly's head in
+passing, he went down to the hall.  He wanted to get hold of her
+before she went up to give her lesson.  At the first sound of
+wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the
+victoria was empty.
+
+"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."
+
+Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push
+away that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter
+disappointment he was feeling.
+
+"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house.  He went to
+his study and sat down, quivering like a leaf.  What did this mean?
+She might have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't.
+'Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon.'  Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-
+night'?  And that hand of hers lingering in the air.  And her kiss.
+What did it mean?  Vehement alarm and irritation took possession of
+him.  He got up and began to pace the Turkey carpet, between window
+and wall.  She was going to give him up!  He felt it for certain--
+and he defenceless.  An old man wanting to look on beauty!  It was
+ridiculous!  Age closed his mouth, paralysed his power to fight.
+He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to anything
+but memories and sorrow.  He could not plead with her; even an old
+man has his dignity.  Defenceless!  For an hour, lost to bodily
+fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had
+plucked, which mocked him with its scent.  Of all things hard to
+bear, the prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has
+always had his way.  Nature had got him in its net, and like an
+unhappy fish he turned and swam at the meshes, here and there,
+found no hole, no breaking point.  They brought him tea at five
+o'clock, and a letter.  For a moment hope beat up in him.  He cut
+the envelope with the butter knife, and read:
+
+
+"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
+disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night.  I
+feel I can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that
+June is coming back.  Some things go too deep to be forgotten.  It
+has been such a joy to see you and Holly.  Perhaps I shall still
+see you sometimes when you come up, though I'm sure it's not good
+for you; I can see you are tiring yourself too much.  I believe you
+ought to rest quite quietly all this hot weather, and now you have
+your son and June coming back you will be so happy.  Thank you a
+million times for all your sweetness to me.
+
+"Lovingly your IRENE."
+
+
+So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he
+chiefly cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end
+of all things, the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling
+footsteps.  Not good for him!  Not even she could see how she was
+his new lease of interest in life, the incarnation of all the
+beauty he felt slipping from him.
+
+His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he
+paced, torn between his dignity and his hold on life.  Intolerable
+to be squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on
+when your will was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to
+the ground with care and love.  Intolerable!  He would see what
+telling her the truth would do--the truth that he wanted the sight
+of her more than just a lingering on.  He sat down at his old
+bureau and took a pen.  But he could not write.  There was some-
+thing revolting in having to plead like this; plead that she should
+warm his eyes with her beauty.  It was tantamount to confessing
+dotage.  He simply could not.  And instead, he wrote:
+
+
+"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to
+stand in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my
+little grand-daughter.  But old men learn to forego their whims;
+they are obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner
+or later; and perhaps the sooner the better.
+"My love to you,
+"JOLYON FORSYTE."
+
+
+'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it.  I'm tired.'  He sealed
+and dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it
+fall to the bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward
+to!'
+
+That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his
+cigar which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went
+very slowly upstairs and stole into the night-nursery.  He sat down
+on the window-seat.  A night-light was burning, and he could just
+see Holly's face, with one hand underneath the cheek.  An early
+cockchafer buzzed in the Japanese paper with which they had filled
+the grate, and one of the horses in the stable stamped restlessly.
+To sleep like that child!  He pressed apart two rungs of the
+venetian blind and looked out.  The moon was rising, blood-red.  He
+had never seen so red a moon.  The woods and fields out there were
+dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the summer light.
+And beauty, like a spirit, walked.  'I've had a long life,' he
+thought, 'the best of nearly everything.  I'm an ungrateful chap;
+I've seen a lot of beauty in my time.  Poor young Bosinney said I
+had a sense of beauty.  There's a man in the moon to-night!'  A
+moth went by, another, another.  'Ladies in grey!'  He closed his
+eyes.  A feeling that he would never open them again beset him; he
+let it grow, let himself sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the
+lids up.  There was something wrong with him, no doubt, deeply
+wrong; he would have to have the doctor after all.  It didn't much
+matter now!  Into that coppice the moon-light would have crept;
+there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the only things
+awake.  No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the shadows--
+moving; 'Ladies in grey!'  Over that log they would climb; would
+whisper together.  She and Bosinney!  Funny thought!  And the frogs
+and little things would whisper too!  How the clock ticked, in
+here!  It was all eerie--out there in the light of that red moon; in
+here with the little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and
+the nurse's dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen,
+tall, like a woman's figure.  'Lady in grey!'  And a very odd
+thought beset him: Did she exist?  Had she ever come at all?  Or
+was she but the emanation of all the beauty he had loved and must
+leave so soon?  The violet-grey spirit with the dark eyes and the
+crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and the moonlight, and at
+blue-bell time?  What was she, who was she, did she exist?  He rose
+and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him a sense
+of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door.  He
+stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his
+eyes fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in
+defence.  He tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage;
+reached his room, undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in
+his night-shirt.  What a scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and
+thin legs! His eyes resisted his own image, and a look of pride
+came on his face.  All was in league to pull him down, even his
+reflection in the glass, but he was not down--yet!  He got into
+bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying to reach
+resignation, only too well aware that fretting and disappointment
+were very bad for him.
+
+He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and strengthless that he sent
+for the doctor.  After sounding him, the fellow pulled a face as
+long as your arm, and ordered him to stay in bed and give up
+smoking.  That was no hardship; there was nothing to get up for, and
+when he felt ill, tobacco always lost its savour.  He spent the
+morning languidly with the sun-blinds down, turning and re-turning
+The Times, not reading much, the dog Balthasar lying beside his bed.
+With his lunch they brought him a telegram, running thus:
+
+'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you
+at four-thirty.  Irene.'
+
+
+Coming down!  After all!  Then she did exist--and he was not
+deserted.  Coming down!  A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks
+and forehead felt hot.  He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-
+table away, lying very quiet until they had removed lunch and left
+him alone; but every now and then his eyes twinkled.  Coming down!
+His heart beat fast, and then did not seem to beat at all.  At
+three o'clock he got up and dressed deliberately, noiselessly.
+Holly and Mam'zelle would be in the schoolroom, and the servants
+asleep after their dinner, he shouldn't wonder.  He opened his door
+cautiously, and went downstairs.  In the hall the dog Balthasar lay
+solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed into his study
+and out into the burning afternoon.  He meant to go down and meet
+her in the coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in
+this heat.  He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing,
+and the dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him.
+He sat there smiling.  What a revel of bright minutes!  What a hum
+of insects, and cooing of pigeons!  It was the quintessence of a
+summer day.  Lovely!  And he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, what-
+ever that might be.  She was coming; she had not given him up!  He
+had everything in life he wanted--except a little more breath, and
+less weight--just here!  He would see her when she emerged from the
+fernery, come swaying just a little, a violet-grey figure passing
+over the daisies and dandelions and 'soldiers' on the lawn--the
+soldiers with their flowery crowns.  He would not move, but she
+would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am sorry!' and
+sit in the swing and let him look at her and tell her that he had
+not been very well but was all right now; and that dog would lick
+her hand.  That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a
+good dog.
+
+It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him,
+only make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the
+Grand Stand at Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows crop-
+ping the clover in the field and swishing at the flies with their
+tails.  He smelled the scent of limes, and lavender.  Ah! that was
+why there was such a racket of bees.  They were excited--busy, as
+his heart was busy and excited.  Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on
+honey and happiness; as his heart was drugged and drowsy.  Summer--
+summer--they seemed saying; great bees and little bees, and the
+flies too!
+
+The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here.
+He would have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep
+of late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and
+beauty, coming towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey!
+And settling back in his chair he closed his eyes.  Some thistle-
+down came on what little air there was, and pitched on his
+moustache more white than itself.  He did not know; but his
+breathing stirred it, caught there.  A ray of sunlight struck
+through and lodged on his boot.  A bumble-bee alighted and strolled
+on the crown of his Panama hat.  And the delicious surge of slumber
+reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward and
+rested on his breast.  Summer--summer!  So went the hum.
+
+The stable clock struck the quarter past.  The dog Balthasar
+stretched and looked up at his master.  The thistledown no longer
+moved.  The dog placed his chin over the sunlit foot.  It did not
+stir.  The dog withdrew his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old
+Jolyon's lap, looked in his face, whined; then, leaping down, sat
+on his haunches, gazing up.  And suddenly he uttered a long, long
+howl.
+
+But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old
+master.
+
+Summer--summer--summer!  The soundless footsteps on the grass!
+
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN CHANCERY
+
+Two households both alike in dignity,
+From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny.
+
+--Romeo and Juliet
+
+
+
+TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD
+
+
+
+
+
+PART 1
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AT TIMOTHY'S
+
+
+The possessive instinct never stands still.  Through florescence
+and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression
+even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever.
+Nor can it be dissociated from environment any more than the
+quality of potato from the soil.
+
+The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his
+good time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from self-
+contented and contained provincialism to still more self-contented
+if less contained imperialism--in other words, the 'possessive'
+instinct of the nation on the move.  And so, as if in conformity,
+was it with the Forsyte family.  They were spreading not merely on
+the surface, but within.
+
+When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed
+her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was
+cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes
+left.  For this apathy there were three causes.  First: the almost
+surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill--
+first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at Highgate.  That
+burial, coming a year after Swithin's entirely proper funeral, had
+occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte 'Change, the abode of
+Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road, London, which still col-
+lected and radiated family gossip.  Opinions ranged from the
+lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of Francie
+that it was 'a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate
+business.'  Uncle Jolyon in his later years--indeed, ever since the
+strange and lamentable affair between his granddaughter June's
+lover, young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte's wife-
+-had noticeably rapped the family's knuckles; and that way of his
+own which he had always taken had begun to seem to them a little
+wayward.  The philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been
+too liable to crop out of the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they
+were in a way prepared for his interment in a strange spot.  But
+the whole thing was an odd business, and when the contents of his
+Will became current coin on Forsyte 'Change, a shiver had gone
+round the clan.  Out of his estate (L145,304 gross, with
+liabilities L35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left L15,000 to "whomever
+do you think, my dear?  To Irene!" that runaway wife of his nephew
+Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family, and--
+still more amazing was to him no blood relation.  Not out and out,
+of course; only a life interest--only the income from it!  Still,
+there it was; and old Jolyon's claim to be the perfect Forsyte was
+ended once for all.  That, then, was the first reason why the
+burial of Susan Hayman--at Woking--made little stir.
+
+The second reason was altogether more expansive and imperial.
+Besides the house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by
+Hayman when he died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman
+boys had learned to be such good shots and riders, as it was
+believed, which was of course nice for them, and creditable to
+everybody; and the fact of owning something really countrified
+seemed somehow to excuse the dispersion of her remains--though what
+could have put cremation into her head they could not think!  The
+usual invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had gone
+down and young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite satisfactory so
+far as it went, for she had only had a life interest; and everything
+had gone quite smoothly to the children in equal shares.
+
+The third reason why Susan's burial made little stir was the most
+expansive of all.  It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the pale,
+the thin: "Well, I think people have a right to their own bodies,
+even when they're dead."  Coming from a daughter of Nicholas, a
+Liberal of the old school and most tyrannical, it was a startling
+remark--showing in a flash what a lot of water had run under
+bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in '86, just when the
+proprietorship of Soames over his wife's body was acquiring the
+uncertainty which had led to such disaster.  Euphemia, of course,
+spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over
+thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte.  But, making all
+allowances, her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the
+principle of liberty, decentralisation and shift in the central
+point of possession from others to oneself.  When Nicholas heard
+his daughter's remark from Aunt Hester he had rapped out: "Wives
+and daughters!  There's no end to their liberty in these days.  I
+knew that 'Jackson' case would lead to things--lugging in Habeas
+Corpus like that!"  He had, of course, never really forgiven the
+Married Woman's Property Act, which would so have interfered with
+him if he had not mercifully married before it was passed.  But,
+in truth, there was no denying the revolt among the younger
+Forsytes against being owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial
+disposition to own oneself, which is the paradoxical forerunner of
+Imperialism, was making progress all the time.  They were all now
+married, except George, confirmed to the Turf and the Iseeum Club;
+Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio off the King's
+Road, Chelsea, and still taking 'lovers' to dances; Euphemia,
+living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two Dromios,
+Giles and Jesse Hayman.  Of the third generation there were not
+very many--young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young
+Nicholas six already, young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one;
+St. John Hayman two.  But the rest of the sixteen married--Soames,
+Rachel and Cicely of James' family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger's;
+Ernest, Archibald and Florence of Nicholas'; Augustus and Annabel
+Spender of the Hayman's--were going down the years unreproduced.
+
+Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been
+born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only
+seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there
+would be more than a further unconsidered trifle or so.  A student
+of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in
+accordance with the rate of interest for your money.  Grandfather
+'Superior Dosset' Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had been
+getting ten per cent. for his, hence ten children.  Those ten,
+leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose husband
+Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once, had averaged
+from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced accordingly.
+The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting barely three per
+cent. in the Consols to which their father had mostly tied the
+Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them
+who had been reproduced had seventeen children, or just the proper
+two and five-sixths per stem.
+
+There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction.  A
+distrust of their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency is
+guaranteed, together with the knowledge that their fathers did not
+die, kept them cautious.  If one had children and not much income,
+the standard of taste and comfort must of necessity go down; what
+was enough for two was not enough for four, and so on--it would be
+better to wait and see what Father did.  Besides, it was nice to be
+able to take holidays unhampered.  Sooner in fact than own
+children, they preferred to concentrate on the ownership of them-
+selves, conforming to the growing tendency fin de siecle, as it
+was called.  In this way, little risk was run, and one would be
+able to have a motor-car.  Indeed, Eustace already had one, but it
+had shaken him horribly, and broken one of his eye teeth; so that
+it would be better to wait till they were a little safer.  In the
+meantime, no more children!  Even young Nicholas was drawing in his
+horns, and had made no addition to his six for quite three years.
+
+The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion
+rather, of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so far
+as to prevent a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899.  It had been
+a glorious summer, and after holidays abroad and at the sea they
+were practically all back in London, when Roger with a touch of his
+old originality had suddenly breathed his last at his own house in
+Princes Gardens.  At Timothy's it was whispered sadly that poor
+Roger had always been eccentric about his digestion--had he not,
+for instance, preferred German mutton to all the other brands?
+
+Be that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and
+coming away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for his
+Uncle Timothy's in the Bayswater Road.  The 'Old Things'--Aunt
+Juley and Aunt Hester--would like to hear about.  it.  His father--
+James--at  eighty-eight had not felt up to the fatigue of the
+funeral; and Timothy himself, of course, had not gone; so that
+Nicholas had been the only brother present.  Still, there had been
+a fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley and Hester up to
+know.  The kindly thought was not unmixed with the inevitable
+longing to get something out of everything you do, which is the
+chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the saner elements
+in every nation.  In this practice of taking family matters to
+Timothy's in the Bayswater Road, Soames was but following in the
+footsteps of his father, who had been in the habit of going at
+least once a week to see his sisters at Timothy's, and had only
+given it up when he lost his nerve at eighty-six, and could not go
+out without Emily.  To go with Emily was of no use, for who could
+really talk to anyone in the presence of his own wife?  Like James
+in the old days, Soames found time to go there nearly every Sunday,
+and sit in the little drawing-room into which, with his undoubted
+taste, he had introduced a good deal of change and china not quite
+up to his own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful
+Barbizon pictures, at Christmastides.  He himself, who had done
+extremely well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved
+towards the Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do
+better.  In the riverside house which he now inhabited near
+Mapledurham he had a gallery, beautifully hung and lighted, to
+which few London dealers were strangers.  It served, too, as a
+Sunday afternoon attraction in those week-end parties which his
+sisters, Winifred or Rachel, occasionally organised for him.  For
+though he was but a taciturn showman, his quiet collected
+determinism seldom failed to influence his guests, who knew that
+his reputation was grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his
+power of gauging the future of market values.  When he went to
+Timothy's he almost always had some little tale of triumph over a
+dealer to unfold, and dearly he loved that coo of pride with which
+his aunts would greet it.  This afternoon, however, he was
+differently animated, coming from Roger's funeral in his neat dark
+clothes--not quite black, for after all an uncle was but an uncle,
+and his soul abhorred excessive display of feeling.  Leaning back
+in a marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted nose at the
+sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably
+silent.  Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the
+peculiar Forsyte build of his face was seen to the best advantage
+this afternoon--a face concave and long, with a jaw which divested
+of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face
+though not at all ill-looking.  He was feeling more strongly than
+ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of
+his aunts dismally mid-Victorian.  The subject on which alone he
+wanted to talk--his own undivorced position--was unspeakable.  And
+yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else.  It was only
+since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown up
+which was egging him on towards what he knew might well be folly in
+a Forsyte of forty-five.  More and more of late he had been
+conscious that he was 'getting on.'  The fortune already
+considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had
+finally wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with
+surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during which he had
+devoted himself to little else.  He was worth to-day well over a
+hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to--no real
+object for going on with what was his religion.  Even if he were to
+relax his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would have
+a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where he was.  There
+had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side to
+Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now
+had crept out again in this his 'prime of life.'  Concreted and
+focussed of late by the attraction of a girl's undoubted beauty, it
+had become a veritable prepossession.
+
+And this girl was French, not likely to lose her head, or accept any
+unlegalised position. Moreover, Soames himself disliked the thought
+of that.  He had tasted of the sordid side of sex during those long
+years of forced celibacy, secretively, and always with disgust, for
+he was fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate.  He wanted
+no hole and corner liaison.  A marriage at the Embassy in Paris, a
+few months' travel, and he could bring Annette back quite separated
+from a past which in truth was not too distinguished, for she only
+kept the accounts in her mother's Soho Restaurant; he could bring
+her back as something very new and chic with her French taste and
+self-possession, to reign at 'The Shelter' near Mapledurham.  On
+Forsyte 'Change and among his riverside friends it would be current
+that he had met a charming French girl on his travels and married
+her.  There would be the flavour of romance, and a certain cachet
+about a French wife.  No! He was not at all afraid of that.  It was
+only this cursed undivorced condition of his, and--and the question
+whether Annette would take him, which he dared not put to the touch
+until he had a clear and even dazzling future to offer her.
+
+In his aunts' drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those
+usual questions: How was his dear father?  Not going out, of
+course, now that the weather was turning chilly?  Would Soames be
+sure to tell him that Hester had found boiled holly leaves most
+comforting for that pain in her side; a poultice every three hours,
+with red flannel afterwards.  And could he relish just a little pot
+of their very best prune preserve--it was so delicious this year,
+and had such a wonderful effect.  Oh! and about the Darties--had
+Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most distressing time
+with Montague?  Timothy thought she really ought to have protection
+It was said--but Soames mustn't take this for certain--that
+he had given some of Winifred's jewellery to a dreadful dancer.
+It was such a bad example for dear Val just as he was going to
+college.  Soames had not heard?  Oh, but he must go and see his
+sister and look into it at once!  And did he think these Boers were
+really going to resist?  Timothy was in quite a stew about it.  The
+price of Consols was so high, and he had such a lot of money in
+them.  Did Soames think they must go down if there was a war?
+Soames nodded.  But it would be over very quickly.  It would be so
+bad for Timothy if it wasn't.  And of course Soames' dear father
+would feel it very much at his age.  Luckily poor dear Roger had
+been spared this dreadful anxiety.  And Aunt Juley with a little
+handkerchief wiped away the large tear trying to climb the
+permanent pout on her now quite withered left cheek; she was
+remembering dear Roger, and all his originality, and how he used to
+stick pins into her when they were little together.  Aunt Hester,
+with her instinct for avoiding the unpleasant, here chimed in: Did
+Soames think they would make Mr. Chamberlain Prime Minister at
+once?  He would settle it all so quickly.  She would like to see
+that old Kruger sent to St. Helena.  She could remember so well the
+news of Napoleon's death, and what a, relief it had been to his
+grandfather.  Of course she and Juley--"We were in pantalettes
+then, my dear"--had not felt it much at the time.
+
+Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate three
+of those macaroons for which Timothy's was famous.  His faint,
+pale, supercilious smile had deepened just a little.  Really, his
+family remained hopelessly provincial, however much of London they
+might possess between them.  In these go-ahead days their provinc-
+ialism stared out even more than it used to.  Why, old Nicholas was
+still a Free Trader, and a member of that antediluvian home of
+Liberalism, the Remove Club--though, to be sure, the members were
+pretty well all Conservatives now, or he himself could not have
+joined; and Timothy, they said, still wore a nightcap.  Aunt Juley
+spoke again.  Dear Soames was looking so well, hardly a day older
+than he did when dear Ann died, and they were all there together,
+dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear Roger.  She paused and
+caught the tear which had climbed the pout on her right cheek.  Did
+he--did he ever hear anything of Irene nowadays?  Aunt Hester
+visibly interposed her shoulder.  Really, Juley was always saying
+something!  The smile left Soames' face, and he put his cup down.
+Here was his subject broached for him, and for all his desire to
+expand, he could not take advantage.
+
+Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:
+
+"They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out and
+out; then of course he saw it would not be right, and made it for
+her life only."
+
+Had Soames heard that?
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now.  He is her trustee; you knew
+that, of course?"
+
+Soames shook his head.  He did know, but wished to show no
+interest.  Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of
+Bosinney's death.
+
+"He must be quite middle-aged by now," went on Aunt Juley dreamily.
+"Let me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in Mount
+Street; long before they went to Stanhope Gate in December.  Just
+before that dreadful Commune.  Over fifty!  Fancy that!  Such a
+pretty baby, and we were all so proud of him; the very first of you
+all."  Aunt Juley sighed, and a lock of not quite her own hair came
+loose and straggled, so that Aunt Hester gave a little shiver.
+Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious piece of self-discovery.
+That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was not yet closed.  He
+had come thinking he could talk of it, even wanting to talk of his
+fettered condition, and--behold! he was shrinking away from this
+reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her Malapropisms.
+
+Oh, Soames was not going already!
+
+Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:
+
+"Yes.  Good-bye.  Remember me to Uncle Timothy!"  And, leaving a
+cold kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and cling
+to his lips as if longing to be kissed away, he left them looking
+brightly after him--dear Soames, it had been so good of him to come
+to-day, when they were not feeling very....!
+
+With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs,
+where was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor and port
+wine, and house where draughts are not permitted.  The poor old
+things--he had not meant to be unkind!  And in the street he
+instantly forgot them, repossessed by the image of Annette and the
+thought of the cursed coil around him.  Why had he not pushed the
+thing through and obtained divorce when that wretched Bosinney was
+run over, and there was evidence galore for the asking!  And he
+turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie's residence in Green
+Street, Mayfair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD
+
+
+That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of fortunes
+as Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he had
+inhabited twenty years at least would have been more noticeable if
+the rent, rates, taxes, and repairs of that house had not been
+defrayed by his father-in-law.  By that simple if wholesale device
+James Forsyte had secured a certain stability in the lives of his
+daughter and his grandchildren.  After all, there is something
+invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a sportsman so
+dashing as Dartie.  Until the events of the last few days he had
+been almost-supernaturally steady all this year.  The fact was he
+had acquired a half share in a filly of George Forsyte's, who had
+gone irreparably on the turf, to the horror of Roger, now stilled
+by the grave.  Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of Shirt-on-fire, by
+Suspender, was a bay filly, three years old, who for a variety of
+reasons had never shown her true form.  With half ownership of this
+hopeful animal, all the idealism latent somewhere in Dartie, as in
+every other man, had put up its head, and kept him quietly ardent
+for months past.  When a man has some thing good to live for it is
+astonishing how sober he becomes; and what Dartie had was really
+good--a three to one chance for an autumn handicap, publicly
+assessed at twenty-five to one.  The old-fashioned heaven was a
+poor thing beside it, and his shirt was on the daughter of Shirt-
+on-fire.  But how much more than his shirt depended on this
+granddaughter of Suspender!  At that roving age of forty-five,
+trying to Forsytes--and, though perhaps less distinguishable from
+any other age, trying even to Darties--Montague had fixed his
+current fancy on a dancer.  It was no mean passion, but without
+money, and a good deal of it, likely to remain a love as airy as
+her skirts; and Dartie never had any money, subsisting miserably on
+what he could beg or borrow from Winifred--a woman of character,
+who kept him because he was the father of her children, and from a
+lingering admiration for those now-dying Wardour Street good looks
+which in their youth had fascinated her.  She, together with anyone
+else who would lend him anything, and his losses at cards and on
+the turf (extraordinary how some men make a good thing out of
+losses!) were his whole means of subsistence; for James was now too
+old and nervous to approach, and Soames too formidably adamant.  It
+is not too much to say that Dartie had been living on hope for
+months.  He had never been fond of money for itself, had always
+despised the Forsytes with their investing habits, though careful
+to make such use of them as he could.  What he liked about money
+was what it bought--personal sensation.
+
+"No real sportsman cares for money," he would say, borrowing a
+'pony' if it was no use trying for a 'monkey.'  There was something
+delicious about Montague Dartie.  He was, as George Forsyte said, a
+'daisy.'
+
+The morning of the Handicap dawned clear and bright, the last day
+of September, and Dartie who had travelled to Newmarket the night
+before, arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an
+eminence to see his half of the filly take her final canter: If she
+won he would be a cool three thou. in pocket--a poor enough
+recompense for the sobriety and patience of these weeks of hope,
+while they had been nursing her for this race.  But he had not been
+able to afford more.  Should he 'lay it off' at the eight to one to
+which she had advanced?  This was his single thought while the
+larks sang above him, and the grassy downs smelled sweet, and the
+pretty filly passed, tossing her head and glowing like satin.
+
+After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid, and to 'lay it
+off' would reduce his winnings to some fifteen hundred--hardly
+enough to purchase a dancer out and out.  Even more potent was the
+itch in the blood of all the Darties for a real flutter.  And
+turning to George he said: "She's a clipper.  She'll win hands
+down; I shall go the whole hog."  George, who had laid off every
+penny, and a few besides, and stood to win, however it came out,
+grinned down on him from his bulky height, with the words: "So ho,
+my wild one!" for after a chequered apprenticeship weathered with
+the money of a deeply complaining Roger, his Forsyte blood was
+beginning to stand him in good stead in the profession of owner.
+
+There are moments of disillusionment in the lives of men from which
+the sensitive recorder shrinks.  Suffice it to say that the good
+thing fell down.  Sleeve-links finished in the ruck.  Dartie's
+shirt was lost.
+
+Between the passing of these things and the day when Soames turned
+his face towards Green Street, what had not happened!
+
+When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised
+self-control for months from religious motives, and remains un-
+rewarded, he does not curse God and die, he curses God and lives,
+to the distress of his family.
+
+Winifred--a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable--who had
+borne the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never
+really believed that he would do what he now did.  Like so many
+wives, she thought she knew the worst, but she had not yet known
+him in his forty-fifth year, when he, like other men, felt that it
+was now or never.  Paying on the 2nd of October a visit of inspec-
+tion to her jewel case, she was horrified to observe that her
+woman's crown and glory was gone--the pearls which Montague had
+given her in '86, when Benedict was born, and which James had been
+compelled to pay for in the spring of '87, to save scandal.  She
+consulted her husband at once.  He 'pooh-poohed' the matter.  They
+would turn up!  Nor till she said sharply: "Very well, then, Monty,
+I shall go down to Scotland Yard myself," did he consent to take
+the matter in hand.  Alas! that the steady and resolved continuity
+of design necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping operations
+should be liable to interruption by drink.  That night Dartie
+returned home without a care in the world or a particle of
+reticence.  Under normal conditions Winifred would merely have
+locked her door and let him sleep it off, but torturing suspense
+about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him.  Taking a small
+revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining table, he
+told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether she lived
+s'long as she was quiet; but he himself wash tired o' life.
+Winifred, holding onto the other side of the dining table,
+answered:
+
+"Don't be a clown, Monty.  Have you been to Scotland Yard?"
+
+Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the
+trigger several times.  It was not loaded.  Dropping it with an
+imprecation, he had muttered: "For shake o' the children," and sank
+into a chair.  Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave him
+some soda water.  The liquor had a magical effect.  Life had
+illused him; Winifred had never 'unshtood'm.'  If he hadn't the
+right to take the pearls he had given her himself, who had?  That
+Spanish filly had got'm.  If Winifred had any 'jection he w'd cut--
+her--throat.  What was the matter with that?  (Probably the first
+use of that celebrated phrase--so obscure are the origins of even
+the most classical language!)
+
+Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school, looked
+up at him, and said: "Spanish filly!  Do you mean that girl we saw
+dancing in the Pandemonium Ballet?  Well, you are a thief and a
+blackguard."  It had been the last straw on a sorely loaded
+consciousness; reaching up from his chair Dartie seized his wife's
+arm, and recalling the achievements of his boyhood, twisted it.
+Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes, but no murmur.
+Watching for a moment of weakness, she wrenched it free; then
+placing the dining table between them, said between her teeth: "You
+are the limit, Monty."  (Undoubtedly the inception of that phrase--
+so is English formed under the stress of circumstances.) Leaving
+Dartie with foam on his dark moustache she went upstairs, and,
+after locking her door and bathing her arm in hot water, lay awake
+all night, thinking of her pearls adorning the neck of another, and
+of the consideration her husband had presumably received therefor.
+
+The man of the world awoke with a sense of  being lost to that
+world, and a dim recollection  of having been called a 'limit.'  He
+sat for half  an hour in the dawn and the armchair where he  had
+slept--perhaps the unhappiest half-hour he  had ever spent, for even
+to a Dartie there is something tragic about an end.  And he knew
+that he  had reached it.  Never again would he sleep in his
+dining-room and wake with the light filtering  through those
+curtains bought by Winifred at  Nickens and Jarveys with the money
+of James.  Never again eat a devilled kidney at that rose-wood
+table, after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath.  He took his note
+case from his dress coat pocket.  Four hundred pounds, in fives and
+tens--the remainder of the proceeds of his half of Sleeve-links,
+sold last night, cash down, to George Forsyte, who, having won over
+the race, had not conceived the sudden dislike to the animal which
+he himself now felt.  The ballet was going to Buenos Aires the day
+after to-morrow, and he was going too.  Full value for the pearls
+had not yet been received; he was only at the soup.
+
+He stole upstairs.  Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides,
+the water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed
+stealthily all he could.  It was hard to leave so many shining
+boots, but one must sacrifice something.  Then, carrying a valise
+in either hand, he stepped out onto the landing.  The house was
+very quiet--that house where he had begotten his four children.  It
+was a curious moment, this, outside the room of his wife, once
+admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him 'the limit.'  He
+steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but the next door
+was harder to pass.  It was the room his daughters slept in.  Maud
+was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture came
+into Dartie's early morning eyes.  She was the most like him of the
+four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance.  Just
+coming out, a pretty thing!  He set down the two valises.  This
+almost formal abdication of fatherhood hurt him.  The morning light
+fell on a face which worked with real emotion.  Nothing so false as
+penitence moved him; but genuine paternal feeling, and that
+melancholy of 'never again.'  He moistened his lips; and complete
+irresolution for a moment paralysed his legs in their check
+trousers.  It was hard--hard to be thus compelled to leave his
+home!  "D---nit!" he muttered, "I never thought it would come to
+this."  Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning to
+get up.  And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on downstairs.
+His cheeks were wet, and the knowledge of that was comforting, as
+though it guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice.  He lingered
+a little in the rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some
+papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide.  Then,
+mixing himself a stiff whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette,
+he stood hesitating before a photograph of his two girls, in a
+silver frame.  It belonged to Winifred.  'Never mind,' he thought;
+'she can get another taken, and I can't!'  He slipped it into the
+valise.  Then, putting on his hat and overcoat, he took two others,
+his best malacca cane, an umbrella, and opened the front door.
+Closing it softly behind him, he walked out, burdened as he had
+never been in all his life, and made his way round the corner to
+wait there for an early cab to come by.
+
+Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age
+from the house which he had called his own.
+
+When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house,
+her first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude
+the reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful
+hours.  He had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman
+as likely as not.  Disgusting!  Forced to a complete reticence
+before Imogen and the servants, and aware that her father's nerves
+would never stand the disclosure, she had been unable to refrain
+from going to Timothy's that afternoon, and pouring out the story
+of the pearls to Aunts Juley and Hester in utter confidence.  It
+was only on the following morning that she noticed the
+disappearance of that photograph.  What did it mean?  Careful
+examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he
+had gone for good.  As that conclusion hardened she stood quite
+still in the middle of his dressing-room, with all the drawers
+pulled out, to try and realise what she was feeling.  By no means
+easy!  Though he was 'the limit' he was yet her property, and for
+the life of her she could not but feel the poorer.  To be widowed
+yet not widowed at forty-two; with four children; made conspicuous,
+an object of commiseration!  Gone to the arms of a Spanish Jade!
+Memories, feelings, which she had thought quite dead, revived
+within her, painful, sullen, tenacious.  Mechanically she closed
+drawer after drawer, went to her bed, lay on it, and buried her
+face in the pillows.  She did not cry.  What was the use of that?
+When she got off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only
+one thing could do her good, and that was to have Val home.  He--
+her eldest boy--who was to go to Oxford next month at James'
+expense, was at Littlehampton taking his final gallops with his
+trainer for Smalls, as he would have phrased it following his
+father's diction.  She caused a telegram to be sent to him.
+
+"I must see about his clothes," she said to Imogen; "I can't have
+him going up to Oxford all anyhow.  Those boys are so particular."
+
+"Val's got heaps of things," Imogen answered.
+
+"I know; but they want overhauling.  I hope he'll come."
+
+"He'll come like a shot, Mother.  But he'll probably skew his
+Exam."
+
+"I can't help that," said Winifred.  "I want him."
+
+With an innocent shrewd look at her mother's face, Imogen kept
+silence.  It was father, of course!  Val did come 'like a shot' at
+six o'clock.
+
+Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young
+Publius Valerius Dartie.  A youth so named could hardly turn out
+otherwise.  When he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits,
+and the craving for distinction, had determined that her children
+should have names such as no others had ever had.  (It was a mercy
+--she felt now--that she had just not named Imogen Thisbe.) But it
+was to George Forsyte, always a wag, that Val's christening was
+due.  It so happened that Dartie, dining with him a week after the
+birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this aspiration of
+Winifred's.
+
+"Call him Cato," said George, "it'll be damned piquant!"  He had
+just won a tenner on a horse of that name.
+
+"Cato!" Dartie had replied--they were a little 'on' as the phrase
+was even in those days--"it's not a Christian name."
+
+"Halo you!" George called to a waiter in knee breeches.  "Bring me
+the Encyc'pedia Brit. from the Library, letter C."
+
+The waiter brought it.
+
+"Here you are!" said George, pointing with his cigar: "Cato Publius
+Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia.  That's what you want.  Publius
+Valerius is Christian enough."
+
+Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred.  She had been
+charmed.  It was so 'chic.'  And Publius Valerius became the baby's
+name, though it afterwards transpired that they had got hold of the
+inferior Cato.  In 1890, however, when little Publius was nearly
+ten, the word 'chic' went out of fashion, and sobriety came in;
+Winifred began to have doubts.  They were confirmed by little
+Publius himself who returned from his first term at school com-
+plaining that life was a burden to him--they called him Pubby.
+Winifred--a woman of real decision--promptly changed his school and
+his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.
+
+At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth,
+light eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile, considerable
+knowledge of what he should not know, and no experience of what he
+ought to do.  Few boys had more narrowly escaped being expelled--
+the engaging rascal.  After kissing his mother and pinching Imogen,
+he ran upstairs three at a time, and came down four, dressed for
+dinner.  He was awfully sorry, but his 'trainer,' who had come up
+too, had asked him to dine at the Oxford and Cambridge; it wouldn't
+do to miss--the old chap would be hurt.  Winifred let him go with
+an unhappy pride.  She had wanted him at home, but it was very nice
+to know that his tutor was so fond of him.  He went out with a wink
+at Imogen, saying: "I say, Mother, could I have two plover's eggs
+when I come in?--cook's got some.  They top up so jolly well.  Oh!
+and look here--have you any money?--I had to borrow a fiver from
+old Snobby."
+
+Winifred, looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:
+
+"My dear, you are naughty about money.  But you shouldn't pay him
+to-night, anyway; you're his guest.  How nice and slim he looked
+in his white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!"
+
+"Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I
+ought to stand the tickets; he's always hard up, you know."
+
+Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:
+
+"Well, perhaps you'd better pay him, but you mustn't stand the
+tickets too."
+
+Val pocketed the fiver.
+
+"If I do, I can't," he said.  "Good-night, Mum!"
+
+He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously, sniffing
+the air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into covert.  Jolly
+good biz!  After that mouldy old slow hole down there!
+
+He found his 'tutor,' not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but
+at the Goat's Club.  This 'tutor' was a year older than himself, a
+good-looking youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a
+small mouth, an oval face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree,
+one of those young men who without effort establish moral
+ascendancy over their companions.  He had missed being expelled
+from school a year before Val, had spent that year at Oxford, and
+Val could almost see a halo round his head.  His name was Crum, and
+no one could get through money quicker.  It seemed to be his only
+aim in life--dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the Forsyte
+would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the value for that
+money was.
+
+They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the Club smoking
+cigars, with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into stalls
+at the Liberty.  For Val the sound of comic songs, the sight of
+lovely legs were fogged and interrupted by haunting fears that he
+would never equal Crum's quiet dandyism.  His idealism was roused;
+and when that is so, one is never quite at ease.  Surely he had too
+wide a mouth, not the best cut of waistcoat, no braid on his
+trousers, and his lavender gloves had no thin black stitchings down
+the back.  Besides, he laughed too much--Crum never laughed, he
+only smiled, with his regular dark brows raised a little so that
+they formed a gable over his just drooped lids.  No! he would never
+be Crum's equal.  All the same it was a jolly good show, and
+Cynthia Dark simply ripping.  Between the acts Crum regaled him
+with particulars of Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge
+became Val's that, if he liked, Crum could go behind.  He simply
+longed to say: "I say, take me!" but dared not, because of his
+deficiencies; and this made the last act or two almost miserable.
+On coming out Crum said: "It's half an hour before they close;
+let's go on to the Pandemonium."  They took a hansom to travel the
+hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because they
+were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade.  It was in
+these little things, this utter negligence of money that Crum had
+such engaging polish.  The ballet was on its last legs and night,
+and the traffic of the Promenade was suffering for the moment.  Men
+and women were crowded in three rows against the barrier.  The
+whirl and dazzle on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco
+fumes and women's scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which
+belongs to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism.
+He looked admiringly in a young woman's face, saw she was not
+young, and quickly looked away.  Shades of Cynthia Dark!  The young
+woman's arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent of musk
+and mignonette.  Val looked round the corner of his lashes. Perhaps
+she was young, after all.  Her foot trod on his; she begged his
+pardon.  He said:
+
+"Not at all; jolly good ballet, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm tired of it; aren't you?"
+
+Young Val smiled--his wide, rather charming smile.  Beyond that he
+did not go--not yet convinced.  The Forsyte in him stood out for
+greater certainty.  And on the stage the ballet whirled its
+kaleidoscope of snow-white, salmon-pink, and emerald-green and
+violet and seemed suddenly to freeze into a stilly spangled
+pyramid.  Applause broke out, and it was over!  Maroon curtains had
+cut it off.  The semi-circle of men and women round the barrier
+broke up, the young woman's arm pressed his.  A little way off
+disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation; Val
+stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking towards
+it.  Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm.  The one in
+the centre wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a dark
+moustache; he reeled a little as he walked.  Crum's voice said slow
+and level: "Look at that bounder, he's screwed!"  Val turned to
+look.  The 'bounder' had disengaged his arm, and was pointing
+straight at them.  Crum's voice, level as ever, said:
+
+"He seems to know you!"  The 'bounder' spoke:
+
+"H'llo!" he said.  "You f'llows, look!  There's my young rascal of
+a son!"
+
+Val saw.  It was his father!  He could have sunk into the crimson
+carpet.  It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his
+father was 'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by
+heavenly revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true.  Yes,
+his father looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink
+carnation, and his square, self-assertive walk.  And without a word
+he ducked behind the young woman and slipped out of the Promenade.
+He heard the word, "Val!" behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted
+steps past the 'chuckersout,' into the Square.
+
+To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience
+a young man can go through.  It seemed to Val, hurrying away, that
+his career had ended before it had begun.  How could he go up to
+Oxford now amongst all those chaps, those splendid friends of
+Crum's, who would know that his father was a 'bounder'!  And
+suddenly he hated Crum.  Who the devil was Crum, to say that?  If
+Crum had been beside him at that moment, he would certainly have
+been jostled off the pavement.  His own father--his own!  A choke
+came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands down deep into his
+overcoat pockets.  Damn Crum!  He conceived the wild idea of
+running back and fending his father, taking him by the arm and
+walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up at once and
+pursued his way down Piccadilly.  A young woman planted herself
+before him.  "Not so angry, darling!"  He shied, dodged her, and
+suddenly became quite cool.  If Crum ever said a word, he would
+jolly well punch his head, and there would be an end of it.  He
+walked a hundred yards or more, contented with that thought, then
+lost its comfort utterly.  It wasn't simple like that!  He
+remembered how, at school, when some parent came down who did not
+pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow afterwards.  It was
+one of those things nothing could remove.  Why had his mother
+married his father, if he was a 'bounder'?  It was bitterly unfair-
+-jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a 'bounder' for father.
+The worst of it was that now Crum had spoken the word, he realised
+that he had long known subconsciously that his father was not 'the
+clean potato.'  It was the beastliest thing that had ever happened
+to him--beastliest thing that had ever happened to any fellow!
+And, down-hearted as he had never yet been, he came to Green
+Street, and let himself in with a smuggled latch-key.  In the
+dining-room his plover's eggs were set invitingly, with some cut
+bread and butter, and a little whisky at the bottom of a decanter--
+just enough, as Winifred had thought, for him to feel himself a
+man.  It made him sick to look at them, and he went upstairs.
+
+Winifred heard him pass, and thought: 'The dear boy's in.  Thank
+goodness!  If he takes after his father I don't know what I shall
+do!  But he won't he's like me.  Dear Val!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS
+
+
+When Soames entered his sister's little Louis Quinze drawing-room,
+with its small balcony, always flowered with hanging geraniums in
+the summer, and now with pots of Lilium Auratum, he was struck by
+the immutability of human affairs.  It looked just the same as on
+his first visit to the newly married Darties twenty-one years ago.
+He had chosen the furniture himself, and so completely that no
+subsequent purchase had ever been able to change the room's
+atmosphere.  Yes, he had founded his sister well, and she had
+wanted it.  Indeed, it said a great deal for Winifred that after
+all this time with Dartie she remained well-founded.  From the
+first Soames had nosed out Dartie's nature from underneath the
+plausibility, savoir faire, and good looks which had dazzled
+Winifred, her mother, and even James, to the extent of permitting
+the fellow to marry his daughter without bringing anything but
+shares of no value into settlement.
+
+Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at her
+Buhl bureau with a letter in her hand.  She rose and came towards
+him.  Tall as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well tailored,
+something in her face disturbed Soames.  She crumpled the letter in
+her hand, but seemed to change her mind and held it out to him.  He
+was her lawyer as well as her brother.
+
+Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:
+
+
+'You will not get chance to insult in my own again.  I am leaving
+country to-morrow.  It's played out.  I'm tired of being insulted
+by you.  You've brought on yourself.  No self-respecting man can
+stand it.  I shall not ask you for anything again.  Good-bye.  I
+took the photograph of the two girls.  Give them my love.  I don't
+care what your family say.  It's all their doing.  I'm going to
+live new life.
+
+'M.D.'
+
+
+This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry.  He
+looked at Winifred--the splotch had clearly come from her; and he
+checked the words: 'Good riddance!'  Then it occurred to him that
+with this letter she was entering that very state which he himself
+so earnestly desired to quit--the state of a Forsyte who was not
+divorced.
+
+Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a little
+gold-topped bottle.  A dull commiseration, together with a vague
+sense of injury, crept about Soames' heart.  He had come to her to
+talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the
+same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy
+from him.  It was always like that!  Nobody ever seemed to think
+that he had troubles and interests of his own.  He folded up the
+letter with the splotch inside, and said:
+
+"What's it all about, now?"
+
+Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.
+
+"Do you think he's really gone, Soames?  You see the state he was
+in when he wrote that."
+
+Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by
+pretending that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:
+
+"I shouldn't think so.  I might find out at his Club."
+
+"If George is there," said Winifred, "he would know."
+
+"George?" said Soames; "I saw him at his father's funeral."
+
+"Then he's sure to be there."
+
+Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister's acumen, said
+grudgingly: "Well, I'll go round.  Have you said anything in Park
+Lane?"
+
+"I've told Emily," returned Winifred, who retained that 'chic' way
+of describing her mother.  "Father would have a fit."
+
+Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James.  With
+another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his sister's
+exact position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly.  The evening
+was drawing in--a touch of chill in the October haze.  He walked
+quickly, with his close and concentrated air.  He must get through,
+for he wished to dine in Soho.  On hearing from the hall porter at
+the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie had not been in to-day, he looked at the
+trusty fellow and decided only to ask if Mr. George Forsyte was in
+the Club.  He was.  Soames, who always looked askance at his cousin
+George, as one inclined to jest at his expense, followed the page-
+boy, slightly reassured by the thought that George had just lost
+his father.  He must have come in for about thirty thousand, be-
+sides what he had under that settlement of Roger's, which had
+avoided death duty.  He found George in a bow-window, staring out
+across a half-eaten plate of muffins.  His tall, bulky, black-
+clothed figure loomed almost threatening, though preserving still
+the supernatural neatness of the racing man.  With a faint grin on
+his fleshy face, he said:
+
+"Hallo, Soames!  Have a muffin?"
+
+"No, thanks," murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the
+desire to say something suitable and sympathetic, added:
+
+"How's your mother?"
+
+"Thanks," said George; "so-so.  Haven't seen you for ages.  You
+never go racing.  How's the City?"
+
+Soames, scenting the approach of a jest, closed up, and answered:
+
+"I wanted to ask you about Dartie.  I hear he's...."
+
+"Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola.  Good for
+Winifred and the little Darties.  He's a treat."
+
+Soames nodded.  Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie
+made them kin.
+
+"Uncle James'll sleep in his bed now," resumed George; "I suppose
+he's had a lot off you, too."
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"Ah! You saw him further," said George amicably.  "He's a real
+rouser.  Young Val will want a bit of looking after.  I was always
+sorry for Winifred.  She's a plucky woman."
+
+Again Soames nodded.  "I must be getting back to her," he said;
+"she just wanted to know for certain.  We may have to take steps.
+I suppose there's no mistake?"
+
+"It's quite O.K.," said George--it was he who invented so many of
+those quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources.
+"He was drunk as a lord last night; but he went off all right this
+morning.  His ship's the Tuscarora;" and, fishing out a card, he
+read mockingly:
+
+"'Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.'  I should
+hurry up with the steps, if I were you.  He fairly fed me up last
+night."
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "but it's not always easy."  Then, conscious
+from George's eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own
+affair, he got up, and held out his hand.  George rose too.
+
+"Remember me to Winifred....  You'll enter her for the Divorce
+Stakes straight off if you ask me."
+
+Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway.  George
+had seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked big
+and lonely in those black clothes.  Soames had never known him so
+subdued.  'I suppose he feels it in a way,' he thought.  'They must
+have about fifty thousand each, all told.  They ought to keep the
+estate together.  If there's a war, house property will go down.
+Uncle Roger was a good judge, though.'  And the face of Annette
+rose before him in the darkening street; her brown hair and her
+blue eyes with their dark lashes, her fresh lips and cheeks, dewy
+and blooming in spite of London, her perfect French figure.  'Take
+steps!' he thought.  Re-entering Winifred's house he encountered
+Val, and they went in together.  An idea had occurred to Soames.
+His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to
+go down and see him at Robin Hill.  Robin Hill!  The odd--the very
+odd feeling those words brought back!  Robin Hill--the house
+Bosinney had built for him and Irene--the house they had never
+lived in--the fatal house!  And Jolyon lived there now!  H'm!  And
+suddenly he thought: 'They say he's got a boy at Oxford!  Why not
+take young Val down and introduce them!  It's an excuse!  Less
+bald--very much less bald!' So, as they went upstairs, he said to
+Val:
+
+"You've got a cousin at Oxford; you've never met him.  I should
+like to take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and
+introduce you.  You'll find it useful."
+
+Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames
+clinched it.
+
+"I'll call for you after lunch.  It's in the country--not far;
+you'll enjoy it."
+
+On the threshold of the drawing-room he recalled with an effort
+that the steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment,
+not himself.
+
+Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.
+
+"It's quite true," he said; "he's gone to Buenos Aires, started
+this morning--we'd better have him shadowed when he lands.  I'll
+cable at once.  Otherwise we may have a lot of expense.  The sooner
+these things are done the better.  I'm always regretting that I
+didn't..." he stopped, and looked sidelong at the silent Winifred.
+"By the way," he went on, "can you prove cruelty?"
+
+Winifred said in a dull voice:
+
+"I don't know.  What is cruelty?"
+
+"Well, has he struck you, or anything?"
+
+Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.
+
+"He twisted my arm.  Or would pointing a pistol count?  Or being
+too drunk to undress himself, or--No--I can't bring in the
+children."
+
+"No," said Soames; "no!  I wonder!  Of course, there's legal
+separation--we can get that.  But separation!  Um!"
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Winifred desolately.
+
+"That he can't touch you, or you him; you're both of you married
+and unmarried."  And again he grunted.  What was it, in fact, but
+his own accursed position, legalised!  No, he would not put her
+into that!
+
+"It must be divorce," he said decisively;" failing cruelty, there's
+desertion.  There's a way of shortening the two years, now.  We get
+the Court to give us restitution of conjugal rights.  Then if he
+doesn't obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six months' time.
+Of course you don't want him back.  But they won't know that.
+Still, there's the risk that he might come.  I'd rather try
+cruelty."
+
+Winifred shook her head.  "It's so beastly."
+
+"Well," Soames murmured, "perhaps there isn't much risk so long as
+he's infatuated and got money.  Don't say anything to anybody, and
+don't pay any of his debts."
+
+Winifred sighed.  In spite of all she had been through, the sense
+of loss was heavy on her.  And this idea of not paying his debts
+any more brought it home to her as nothing else yet had.  Some
+richness seemed to have gone out of life.  Without her husband,
+without her pearls, without that intimate sense that she made a
+brave show above the domestic whirlpool, she would now have to face
+the world.  She felt bereaved indeed.
+
+And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put more
+than his usual warmth.
+
+"I have to go down to Robin Hill to-morrow," he said, "to see young
+Jolyon on business.  He's got a boy at Oxford.  I'd like to take
+Val with me and introduce him.  Come down to 'The Shelter' for the
+week-end and bring the children.  Oh! by the way, no, that won't
+do; I've got some other people coming."  So saying, he left her and
+turned towards Soho.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOHO
+
+
+Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London,
+Soho is perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit.  'So-ho, my
+wild one!'  George would have said if he had seen his cousin going
+there.  Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians,
+tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people
+looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the British
+Body Politic.  Yet has it haphazard proprietary instincts of its
+own, and a certain possessive prosperity which keeps its rents up
+when those of other quarters go down.  For long years Soames'
+acquaintanceship with Soho had been confined to its Western
+bastion, Wardour Street.  Many bargains had he picked up there.
+Even during those seven years at Brighton after Bosinney's death
+and Irene's flight, he had bought treasures there sometimes, though
+he had no place to put them; for when the conviction that his wife
+had gone for good at last became firm within him, he had caused a
+board to be put up in Montpellier Square:
+
+FOR SALE
+
+THE LEASE OF THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE
+
+Enquire of Messrs.  Lesson and Tukes,
+Court Street, Belgravia.
+
+
+It had sold within a week--that desirable residence, in the shadow
+of whose perfection a man and a woman had eaten their hearts out.
+
+Of a misty January evening, just before the board was taken down,
+Soames had gone there once more, and stood against the Square
+railings, looking at its unlighted windows, chewing the cud of
+possessive memories which had turned so bitter in the mouth.  Why
+had she never loved him?  Why?  She had been given all she had
+wanted, and in return had given him, for three long years, all he
+had wanted--except, indeed, her heart.  He had uttered a little
+involuntary groan, and a passing policeman had glanced suspiciously
+at him who no longer possessed the right to enter that green door
+with the carved brass knocker beneath the board 'For Sale!'  A
+choking sensation had attacked his throat, and he had hurried away
+into the mist.  That evening he had gone to Brighton to live....
+
+Approaching Malta Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne, where
+Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her accounts,
+Soames thought with wonder of those seven years at Brighton.  How
+had he managed to go on so long in that town devoid of the scent of
+sweetpeas, where he had not even space to put his treasures?  True,
+those had been years with no time at all for looking at them--years
+of almost passionate money-making, during which Forsyte, Bustard
+and Forsyte had become solicitors to more limited Companies than
+they could properly attend to.  Up to the City of a morning in a
+Pullman car, down from the City of an evening in a Pullman car.
+Law papers again after dinner, then the sleep of the tired, and up
+again next morning.  Saturday to Monday was spent at his Club in
+town--curious reversal of customary procedure, based on the deep
+and careful instinct that while working so hard he needed sea air
+to and from the station twice a day, and while resting must indulge
+his domestic affections.  The Sunday visit to his family in Park
+Lane, to Timothy's, and to Green Street; the occasional visits
+elsewhere had seemed to him as necessary to health as sea air on
+weekdays.  Even since his migration to Mapledurham he had main-
+tained those habits until--he had known Annette.
+
+Whether Annette had produced the revolution in his outlook, or that
+outlook had produced Annette, he knew no more than we know where a
+circle begins.  It was intricate and deeply involved with the
+growing consciousness that property without anyone to leave it to
+is the negation of true Forsyteism.  To have an heir, some
+continuance of self, who would begin where he left off--ensure, in
+fact, that he would not leave off--had quite obsessed him for the
+last year and more.  After buying a bit of Wedgwood one evening in
+April, he had dropped into Malta Street to look at a house of his
+father's which had been turned into a restaurant--a risky pro-
+ceeding, and one not quite in accordance with the terms of the
+lease.  He had stared for a little at the outside  painted a good
+cream colour, with two peacock-blue tubs containing little bay-
+trees in a recessed doorway--and at the words 'Restaurant Bretagne'
+above them in gold letters, rather favourably impressed.  Entering,
+he had noticed that several people were already seated at little
+round green tables with little pots of fresh flowers on them and
+Brittany-ware plates, and had asked of a trim waitress to see the
+proprietor.  They had shown him into a back room, where a girl was
+sitting at a simple bureau covered with papers, and a small round,
+table was laid for two.  The impression of cleanliness, order, and
+good taste was confirmed when the girl got up, saying, "You wish to
+see Maman, Monsieur?" in a broken accent.
+
+"Yes," Soames had answered, "I represent your landlord; in fact,
+I'm his son."
+
+"Won't you sit down, sir, please?  Tell Maman to come to this
+gentleman."
+
+He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed
+business instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was remarkably
+pretty--so remarkably pretty that his eyes found a difficulty in
+leaving her face.  When she moved to put a chair for him, she
+swayed in a curious subtle way, as if she had been put together by
+someone with a special secret skill; and her face and neck, which
+was a little bared, looked as fresh as if they had been sprayed
+with dew.  Probably at this moment Soames decided that the lease
+had not been violated; though to himself and his father he based
+the decision on the efficiency of those illicit adaptations in the
+building, on the signs of prosperity, and the obvious business
+capacity of Madame Lamotte.  He did not, however, neglect to leave
+certain matters to future consideration, which had necessitated
+further visits, so that the little back room had become quite
+accustomed to his spare, not unsolid, but unobtrusive figure, and
+his pale, chinny face with clipped moustache and dark hair not yet
+grizzling at the sides.
+
+"Un Monsieur tres distingue," Madame Lamotte found him; and
+presently, "Tres amical, tres gentil," watching his eyes upon her
+daughter.
+
+She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired
+Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect
+confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their
+knowledge of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank
+balances.
+
+After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits
+ceased--without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like
+all Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a
+born empiricist.  But it was this change in his mode of life which
+had gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to
+alter his condition from that of the unmarried married man to that
+of the married man remarried.
+
+Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899,
+he bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of the
+Dreyfus case--a question which he had always found useful in making
+closer acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her daughter, who
+were Catholic and anti-Dreyfusard.
+
+Scanning those columns, Soames found nothing French, but noticed a
+general fall on the Stock Exchange and an ominous leader about the
+Transvaal.  He entered, thinking: 'War's a certainty.  I shall sell
+my consols.'  Not that he had many, personally, the rate of
+interest was too wretched; but he should advise his Companies--
+consols would assuredly go down.  A look, as he passed the doorways
+of the restaurant, assured him that business was good as ever, and
+this, which in April would have pleased him, now gave him a certain
+uneasiness.  If the steps which he had to take ended in his
+marrying Annette, he would rather see her mother safely back in
+France, a move to which the prosperity of the Restaurant Bretagne
+might become an obstacle.  He would have to buy them out, of
+course, for French people only came to England to make money; and
+it would mean a higher price.  And then that peculiar sweet
+sensation at the back of his throat, and a slight thumping about
+the heart, which he always experienced at the door of the little
+room, prevented his thinking how much it would cost.
+
+Going in, he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing
+through the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her hands
+up to her hair.  It was the attitude in which of all others he
+admired her--so beautifully straight and rounded and supple.  And
+he said:
+
+"I just came in to talk to your mother about pulling down that
+partition.  No, don't call her."
+
+"Monsieur will have supper with us?  It will be ready in ten
+minutes."  Soames, who still held her hand, was overcome by an
+impulse which surprised him.
+
+"You look so pretty to-night," he said, "so very pretty.  Do you
+know how pretty you look, Annette?"
+
+Annette withdrew her hand, and blushed.  "Monsieur is very good."
+
+"Not a bit good," said Soames, and sat down gloomily.
+
+Annette made a little expressive gesture with her hands; a smile
+was crinkling her red lips untouched by salve.
+
+And, looking at those lips, Soames said:
+
+"Are you happy over here, or do you want to go back to France?"
+
+"Oh, I like London.  Paris, of course.  But London is better than
+Orleans, and the English country is so beautiful.  I have been to
+Richmond last Sunday."
+
+Soames went through a moment of calculating struggle.  Mapledurham!
+Dared he?  After all, dared he go so far as that, and show her what
+there was to look forward to!  Still!  Down there one could say
+things.  In this room it was impossible.
+
+"I want you and your mother," he said suddenly, "to come for the
+afternoon next Sunday.  My house is on the river, it's not too late
+in this weather; and I can show you some good pictures.  What do
+you say?"
+
+Annette clasped her hands.
+
+"It will be lovelee.  The river is so beautiful"
+
+"That's understood, then.  I'll ask Madame."
+
+He need say no more to her this evening, and risk giving himself
+away.  But had he not already said too much?  Did one ask
+restaurant proprietors with pretty daughters down to one's country
+house without design?  Madame Lamotte would see, if Annette didn't.
+Well! there was not much that Madame did not see.  Besides, this
+was the second time he had stayed to supper with them; he owed them
+hospitality.
+
+Walking home towards Park Lane--for he was staying at his father's-
+-with the impression of Annette's soft clever hand within his own,
+his thoughts were pleasant, slightly sensual, rather puzzled.  Take
+steps!  What steps?  How?  Dirty linen washed in public?  Pah!
+With his reputation for sagacity, for far-sightedness and the
+clever extrication of others, he, who stood for proprietary
+interests, to become the plaything of that Law of which he was a
+pillar!  There was something revolting in the thought!  Winifred's
+affair was bad enough!  To have a double dose of publicity in the
+family!  Would not a liaison be better than that--a liaison, and a
+son he could adopt?  But dark, solid, watchful, Madame Lamotte
+blocked the avenue of that vision.  No! that would not work.  It
+was not as if Annette could have a real passion for him; one could
+not expect that at his age.  If her mother wished, if the worldly
+advantage were manifestly great--perhaps!  If not, refusal would be
+certain.  Besides, he thought: 'I'm not a villain.  I don't want to
+hurt her; and I don't want anything underhand.  But I do want her,
+and I want a son!  There's nothing for it but divorce--somehow--
+anyhow--divorce!'  Under the shadow of the plane-trees, in the
+lamplight, he passed slowly along the railings of the Green Park.
+Mist clung there among the bluish tree shapes, beyond range of the
+lamps.  How many hundred times he had walked past those trees from
+his father's house in Park Lane, when he was quite a young man; or
+from his own house in Montpellier Square in those four years of
+married life!  And, to-night, making up his mind to free himself if
+he could of that long useless marriage tie, he took a fancy to walk
+on, in at Hyde Park Corner, out at Knightsbridge Gate, just as he
+used to when going home to Irene in the old days.  What could she
+be like now?--how had she passed the years since he last saw her,
+twelve years in all, seven already since Uncle Jolyon left her that
+money?  Was she still beautiful?  Would he know her if he saw her?
+'I've not changed much,' he thought; 'I expect she has.  She made
+me suffer.'  He remembered suddenly one night, the first on which
+he went out to dinner alone--an old Malburian dinner--the first
+year of their marriage.  With what eagerness he had hurried back;
+and, entering softly as a cat, had heard her playing.  Opening the
+drawingroom door noiselessly, he had stood watching the expression
+on her face, different from any he knew, so much more open, so
+confiding, as though to her music she was giving a heart he had
+never seen.  And he remembered how she stopped and looked round,
+how her face changed back to that which he did know, and what an
+icy shiver had gone through him, for all that the next moment he
+was fondling her shoulders.  Yes, she had made him suffer!
+Divorce!  It seemed ridiculous, after all these years of utter
+separation!  But it would have to be.  No other way!  'The
+question,' he thought with sudden realism, 'is--which of us?  She
+or me?  She deserted me.  She ought to pay for it.  There'll be
+someone, I suppose.'  Involuntarily he uttered a little snarling
+sound, and, turning, made his way back to Park Lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JAMES SEES VISIONS
+
+
+The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly, detained
+Soames on the inner mat.
+
+"The master's poorly, sir," he murmured.  "He wouldn't go to bed
+till you came in.  He's still in the diningroom."
+
+Soames responded in the hushed tone to which the house was now
+accustomed.
+
+"What's the matter with him, Warmson?"
+
+"Nervous, sir, I think.  Might be the funeral; might be Mrs.
+Dartie's comin' round this afternoon.  I think he overheard
+something.  I've took him in a negus.  The mistress has just gone
+up."
+
+Soames hung his hat on a mahogany stag's-horn.
+
+"All right, Warmson, you can go to bed; I'll take him up myself."
+And he passed into the dining-room.
+
+James was sitting before the fire, in a big armchair, with a
+camel-hair shawl, very light and warm, over his frock-coated
+shoulders, on to which his long white whiskers drooped.  His white
+hair, still fairly thick, glistened in the lamplight; a little
+moisture from his fixed, light-grey eyes stained the cheeks, still
+quite well coloured, and the long deep furrows running to the
+corners of the clean-shaven lips, which moved as if mumbling
+thoughts.  His long legs, thin as a crow's, in shepherd's plaid
+trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a
+spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and
+glistening tapered nails.  Beside him, on a low stool, stood a
+half-finished glass of negus, bedewed with beads of heat.  There he
+had been sitting, with intervals for meals, all day.  At eighty-
+eight he was still organically sound, but suffering terribly from
+the thought that no one ever told him anything.  It is, indeed,
+doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was being buried that
+day, for Emily had kept it from him.  She was always keeping things
+from him.  Emily was only seventy!  James had a grudge against his
+wife's youth.  He felt sometimes that he would never have married
+her if he had known that she would have so many years before her,
+when he had so few.  It was not natural.  She would live fifteen or
+twenty years after he was gone, and might spend a lot of money; she
+had always had extravagant tastes.  For all he knew she might want
+to buy one of these motor-cars.  Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and
+all the young people--they all rode those bicycles now and went off
+Goodness knew where.  And now Roger was gone.  He didn't know--
+couldn't tell!  The family was breaking up.  Soames would know how
+much his uncle had left.  Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames'
+uncle not as his own brother.  Soames!  It was more and more the
+one solid spot in a vanishing world.  Soames was careful; he was a
+warm man; but he had no one to leave his money to.  There it was!
+He didn't know!  And there was that fellow Chamberlain!  For James'
+political principles had been fixed between '70 and '85 when 'that
+rascally Radical' had been the chief thorn in the side of property
+and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion; he
+would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he
+had done with it.  A stormy petrel of a chap!  Where was Soames?
+He had gone to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep
+from him.  He knew that perfectly well; he had seen his son's
+trousers.  Roger! Roger in his coffin!  He remembered how, when
+they came up from school together from the West, on the box seat of
+the old Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got into the 'boot' and gone
+to sleep.  James uttered a thin cackle.  A funny fellow--Roger--an
+original!  He didn't know!  Younger than himself, and in his
+coffin!  The family was breaking up.  There was Val going to the
+university; he never came to see him now.  He would cost a pretty
+penny up there.  It was an extravagant age.  And all the pretty
+pennies that his four grandchildren would cost him danced before
+James' eyes.  He did not grudge them the money, but he grudged
+terribly the risk which the spending of that money might bring on
+them; he grudged the diminution of security.  And now that Cicely
+had married, she might be having children too.  He didn't know--
+couldn't tell!  Nobody thought of anything but spending money in
+these days, and racing about, and having what they called 'a good
+time.'  A motor-car went past the window.  Ugly great lumbering
+thing, making all that racket!  But there it was, the country
+rattling to the dogs!  People in such a hurry that they couldn't
+even care for style--a neat turnout like his barouche and bays was
+worth all those new-fangled things.  And consols at 116!  There
+must be a lot of money in the country.  And now there was this old
+Kruger!  They had tried to keep old Kruger from him.  But he knew
+better; there would be a pretty kettle of fish out there!  He had
+known how it would be when that fellow Gladstone--dead now, thank
+God! made such a mess of it after that dreadful business at Majuba.
+He shouldn't wonder if the Empire split up and went to pot.  And
+this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a full quarter of an
+hour with qualms of the most serious character.  He had eaten a
+poor lunch because of them.  But it was after lunch that the real
+disaster to his nerves occurred.  He had been dozing when he became
+aware of voices--low voices.  Ah! they never told him anything!
+Winifred's and her mother's.  "Monty!"  That fellow Dartie--always
+that fellow Dartie!  The voices had receded; and James had been
+left alone, with his ears standing up like a hare's, and fear
+creeping about his inwards.  Why did they leave him alone?  Why
+didn't they come and tell him?  And an awful thought, which through
+long years had haunted him, concreted again swiftly in his brain.
+Dartie had gone bankrupt--fraudulently bankrupt, and to save
+Winifred and the children, he--James--would have to pay!  Could he--
+could Soames turn him into a limited company?  No, he couldn't!
+There it was!  With every minute before Emily came back the spectre
+fiercened.  Why, it might be forgery!  With eyes fixed on the
+doubted Turner in the centre of the wall, James suffered tortures.
+He saw Dartie in the dock, his grandchildren in the gutter, and
+himself in bed.  He saw the doubted Turner being sold at Jobson's,
+and all the majestic edifice of property in rags.  He saw in fancy
+Winifred unfashionably dressed, and heard in fancy Emily's voice
+saying: "Now, don't fuss, James!"  She was always saying: "Don't
+fuss!"  She had no nerves; he ought never to have married a woman
+eighteen years younger than himself.  Then Emily's real voice said:
+
+"Have you had a nice nap, James?"
+
+Nap!  He was in torment, and she asked him that!
+
+"What's this about Dartie?" he said, and his eyes glared at her.
+
+Emily's self-possession never deserted her.
+
+"What have you been hearing?" she asked blandly.
+
+"What's this about Dartie?" repeated James.  "He's gone bankrupt."
+
+"Fiddle!"
+
+James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his
+stork-like figure.
+
+"You never tell me anything," he said; "he's gone bankrupt."
+
+The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that
+mattered at the moment.
+
+"He has not," she answered firmly.  "He's gone to Buenos Aires."
+
+If she had said "He's gone to Mars" she could not have dealt James
+a more stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in British
+securities, could as little grasp one place as the other.
+
+"What's he gone there for?" he said.  "He's got no money.  What did
+he take?"
+
+Agitated within by Winifred's news, and goaded by the constant
+reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:
+
+"He took Winifred's pearls and a dancer."
+
+"What!" said James, and sat down.
+
+His sudden collapse alarmed her, and smoothing his forehead, she
+said:
+
+"Now, don't fuss, James!"
+
+A dusky red had spread over James' cheeks and forehead.
+
+"I paid for them," he said tremblingly; "he's a thief!  I--I knew
+how it would be.  He'll be the death of me; he ...."  Words failed
+him and he sat quite still.  Emily, who thought she knew him so
+well, was alarmed, and went towards the sideboard where she kept
+some sal volatile.  She could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit
+working in that thin, tremulous shape against the extravagance of
+the emotion called up by this outrage on Forsyte principles--the
+Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying: 'You mustn't get into a
+fantod, it'll never do.  You won't digest your lunch.  You'll have
+a fit!'  All unseen by her, it was doing better work in James than
+sal volatile.
+
+"Drink this," she said.
+
+James waved it aside.
+
+"What was Winifred about," he said, "to let him take her pearls?"
+Emily perceived the crisis past.
+
+"She can have mine," she said comfortably.  "I never wear them.
+She'd better get a divorce."
+
+"There you go!" said James.  "Divorce!  We've never had a divorce
+in the family.  Where's Soames?"
+
+"He'll be in directly."
+
+"No, he won't," said James, almost fiercely; "he's at the funeral.
+You think I know nothing."
+
+"Well," said Emily with calm, "you shouldn't get into such fusses
+when we tell you things."  And plumping up his cushions, and
+putting the sal volatile beside him, she left the room.
+
+But James sat there seeing visions--of Winifred in the Divorce
+Court, and the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on
+Roger's coffin; of Val taking after his father; of the pearls he
+had paid for and would never see again; of money back at four per
+cent., and the country going to the dogs; and, as the afternoon
+wore into evening, and tea-time passed, and dinnertime, those
+visions became more and more mixed and menacing--of being told
+nothing, till he had nothing left of all his wealth, and they told
+him nothing of it.  Where was Soames?  Why didn't he come in?...
+His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it to drink, and saw
+his son standing there looking at him.  A little sigh of relief
+escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he said:
+
+"There you are!  Dartie's gone to Buenos Aires."
+
+Soames nodded.  "That's all right," he said; "good riddance."
+
+A wave of assuagement passed over James' brain.  Soames knew.
+Soames was the only one of them all who had sense.  Why couldn't he
+come and live at home?  He had no son of his own.  And he said
+plaintively:
+
+"At my age I get nervous.  I wish you were more at home, my boy."
+
+Again Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no
+understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident touched
+his father's shoulder.
+
+"They sent their love to you at Timothy's," he said.  "It went off
+all right.  I've been to see Winifred.  I'm going to take steps."
+And he thought: 'Yes, and you mustn't hear of them.'
+
+James looked up; his long white whiskers quivered, his thin throat
+between the points of his collar looked very gristly and naked.
+
+"I've been very poorly all day," he said; "they never tell me
+anything."
+
+Soames' heart twitched.
+
+"Well, it's all right.  There's nothing to worry about.  Will you
+come up now?" and he put his hand under his father's arm.
+
+James obediently and tremulously raised himself, and together they
+went slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the
+firelight, and out to the stairs.  Very slowly they ascended.
+
+"Good-night, my boy," said James at his bedroom door.
+
+"Good-night, father," answered Soames.  His hand stroked down the
+sleeve beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it,
+so thin was the arm.  And, turning away from the light in the
+opening doorway, he went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.
+
+'I want a son,' he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed;
+'I want a son.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME
+
+
+Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper
+lawn at Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled
+under it and said to Soames: "Forsyte, I've found the very place
+for your house."  Since then Swithin had dreamed, and old Jolyon
+died, beneath its branches.  And now, close to the swing,
+no-longer-young Jolyon often painted there.  Of all spots in the
+world it was perhaps the most sacred to him, for he had loved his
+father.
+
+Contemplating its great girth--crinkled and a little mossed, but
+not yet hollow--he would speculate on the passage of time.  That
+tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he
+shouldn't wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least.  His own
+fifty years were as nothing to its wood.  When the house behind it,
+which he now owned, was three hundred years of age instead of
+twelve, that tree might still be standing there, vast and hollow--
+for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it down?  A Forsyte
+might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it jealously.
+And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like coated with
+such age.  Wistaria was already about its walls--the new look had
+gone.  Would it hold its own and keep the dignity Bosinney had
+bestowed on it, or would the giant London have lapped it round and
+made it into an asylum in the midst of a jerry-built wilderness?
+Often, within and without of it, he was persuaded that Bosinney had
+been moved by the spirit when he built.  He had put his heart into
+that house, indeed!  It might even become one of the 'homes of
+England'--a rare achievement for a house in these degenerate days
+of building.  And the aesthetic spirit, moving hand in hand with
+his Forsyte sense of possessive continuity, dwelt with pride and
+pleasure on his ownership thereof.  There was the smack of
+reverence and ancestor-worship (if only for one ancestor) in his
+desire to hand this house down to his son and his son's son.  His
+father had loved the house, had loved the view, the grounds, that
+tree; his last years had been happy there, and no one had lived
+there before him.  These last eleven years at Robin Hill had formed
+in Jolyon's life as a painter, the important period of success.  He
+was now in the very van of water-colour art, hanging on the line
+everywhere.  His drawings fetched high prices.  Specialising in
+that one medium with the tenacity of his breed, he had 'arrived'-
+-rather late, but not too late for a member of the family which
+made a point of living for ever.  His art had really deepened and
+improved.  In conformity with his position he had grown a short
+fair beard, which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his
+Forsyte chin; his brown face had lost the warped expression of his
+ostracised period--he looked, if anything, younger.  The loss of
+his wife in 1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which
+turn out in the end for the good of all.  He had, indeed, loved her
+to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become
+increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous
+even of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint
+that he could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to
+everyone, and better dead.'  He had mourned her sincerely, but his
+face had looked younger since she died.  If she could only have
+believed that she made him happy, how much happier would the twenty
+years of their companionship have been!
+
+June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly
+taken her own mother's place; and ever since old Jolyon died she
+had been established in a sort of studio in London.  But she had
+come back to Robin Hill on her stepmother's death, and gathered the
+reins there into her small decided hands.  Jolly was then at
+Harrow; Holly still learning from Mademoiselle Beauce.  There had
+been nothing to keep Jolyon at home, and he had removed his grief
+and his paint-box abroad.  There he had wandered, for the most part
+in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in Paris.  He had stayed
+there several months, and come back with the younger face and the
+short fair beard.  Essentially a man who merely lodged in any
+house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign at Robin
+Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where and when
+he liked.  She was inclined, it is true, to regard the house rather
+as an asylum for her proteges! but his own outcast days had filled
+Jolyon for ever with sympathy towards an outcast, and June's 'lame
+ducks' about the place did not annoy him.  By all means let her
+have them down--and feed them up; and though his slightly cynical
+humour perceived that they ministered to his daughter's love of
+domination as well as moved her warm heart, he never ceased to
+admire her for having so many ducks.  He fell, indeed, year by year
+into a more and more detached and brotherly attitude towards his
+own son and daughters, treating them with a sort of whimsical
+equality.  When he went down to Harrow to see Jolly, he never quite
+knew which of them was the elder, and would sit eating cherries
+with him out of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical
+smile twisting up an eyebrow and curling his lips a little.  And he
+was always careful to have money in his pocket, and to be modish in
+his dress, so that his son need not blush for him.  They were
+perfect friends, but never seemed to have occasion for verbal
+confidences, both having the competitive self-consciousness of
+Forsytes.  They knew they would stand by each other in scrapes, but
+there  was no need to talk about it.  Jolyon had a striking horror-
+-partly original sin, but partly the result of his early
+immorality--of the moral attitude.  The most he could ever have
+said to his son would have been:
+
+"Look here, old man; don't forget you're a gentleman," and then have
+wondered whimsically whether that was not a snobbish sentiment.  The
+great cricket match was perhaps the most searching and awkward time
+they annually went through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton.
+They would be particularly careful during that match, continually
+saying: "Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck,
+Dad!" to each other, when some disaster at which their hearts
+bounded happened to the opposing  school.  And Jolyon would wear a
+grey top hat, instead of his usual soft one, to save his son's
+feelings, for a black top hat he could not stomach.  When Jolly went
+up to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused, humble, and a little
+anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these youths who seemed
+so much more assured and old than himself.  He often thought, 'Glad
+I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing at Lloyds--
+'it's so innocuous.  You can't look down on a painter--you can't
+take him seriously enough.'  For Jolly, who had a sort of natural
+lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who secretly
+amused his father.  The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and
+his grandfather's deepset iron-grey eyes.  He was well-built and
+very upright, and always pleased Jolyon's aesthetic sense, so that
+he was a tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are of those of
+their own sex whom they admire physically.  On that occasion,
+however, he actually did screw up his courage to give his son
+advice, and this was it:
+
+"Look here, old man, you're bound to get into debt; mind you come
+to me at once.  Of course, I'll always pay them.  But you might
+remember that one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays
+one's own way.  And don't ever borrow, except from me, will you?"
+
+And Jolly had said:
+
+"All right, Dad, I won't," and he never had.
+
+"And there's just one other thing.  I don't know much about
+morality and that, but there is this: It's always worth while
+before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt
+another person more than is absolutely necessary."
+
+Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had squeezed
+his father's hand.  And Jolyon had thought: 'I wonder if I had the
+right to say that?'  He always had a sort of dread of losing the
+dumb confidence they had in each other; remembering how for long
+years he had lost his own father's, so that there had been nothing
+between them but love at a great distance.  He under-estimated, no
+doubt, the change in the spirit of the age since he himself went up
+to Cambridge in '65; and perhaps he underestimated, too, his boy's
+power of understanding that he was tolerant to the very bone.  It
+was that tolerance of his, and possibly his scepticism, which ever
+made his relations towards June so queerly defensive.  She was such
+a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly well; wanted things
+so inexorably until she got them--and then, indeed, often dropped
+them like a hot potato.  Her mother had been like that, whence had
+come all those tears.  Not that his incompatibility with his
+daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs.
+Young Jolyon.  One could be amused where a daughter was concerned;
+in a wife's case one could not be amused.  To see June set her
+heart and jaw on a thing until she got it was all right, because it
+was never anything which interfered fundamentally with Jolyon's
+liberty--the one thing on which his jaw was also absolutely rigid,
+a considerable jaw, under that short grizzling beard.  Nor was
+there ever any necessity for real heart-to-heart encounters.  One
+could break away into irony--as indeed he often had to.  But the
+real trouble with June was that she had never appealed to his
+aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her red-gold hair
+and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the Berserker in
+her spirit.  It was very different with Holly, soft and quiet, shy
+and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere.  He watched
+this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with
+extraordinary interest.  Would she come out a swan?  With her
+sallow oval face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark
+lashes, she might, or she might not.  Only this last year had he
+been able to guess.  Yes, she would be a swan--rather a dark one,
+always a shy one, but an authentic swan.  She was eighteen now, and
+Mademoiselle Beauce was gone--the excellent lady had removed, after
+eleven years haunted by her continuous reminiscences of the 'well-
+brrred little Tayleurs,' to another family whose bosom would now be
+agitated by her reminiscences of the 'well-brrred little Forsytes.'
+She had taught Holly to speak French like herself.
+
+Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his
+younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the
+afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him
+which caused his eyebrows to go up:
+
+
+        Mr. SOAMES FORSYTE
+
+THE SHELTER,          CONNOISSEURS CLUB,
+MAPLEDURHAM.          ST. JAMES'S.
+
+
+But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....
+
+To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a
+little daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved
+father lying peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never
+likely to be, forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man
+as Jolyon.  A sense as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and
+about the end of one whose life had been so well-ordered, balanced,
+and above-board.  It seemed incredible that his father could thus
+have vanished without, as it were, announcing his intention,
+without last words to his son, and due farewells.  And those
+incoherent allusions of little Holly to 'the lady in grey,' of
+Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded) involved all
+things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father's will
+and the codicil thereto.  It had been his duty as executor of that
+will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her
+life interest in fifteen thousand pounds.  He had called on her to
+explain that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to
+meet the charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of
+L430 odd a year, clear of income tax.  This was but the third time
+he had seen his cousin Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his
+wife, of which he was not quite sure.  He remembered having seen
+her sitting in the Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney--a
+passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of Titian's 'Heavenly
+Love,' and again, when, charged by his father, he had gone to
+Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's death was
+known.  He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
+drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing
+from wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the
+compassion he had felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are
+not at home!" and the slam of the front door.
+
+This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from
+that warp of wild hope and despair.  Looking at her, he thought:
+'Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!'  And the
+strange story of his father's Indian summer became slowly clear to
+him.  She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes.
+"He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don't know why.  He looked so
+beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the tree; it was
+I who first came on him sitting there, you know.  Such a lovely
+day.  I don't think an end could have been happier.  We should all
+like to go out like that."
+
+'Quite right!' he had thought.  'We should all a like to go out in
+full summer with beauty stepping towards us across a lawn.'  And
+looking round the little, almost empty drawing-room, he had asked
+her what she was going to do now. "I am going to live again a
+little, Cousin Jolyon.  It's wonderful to have money of one's own.
+I've never had any.  I shall keep this flat, I think; I'm used to
+it; but I shall be able to go to Italy."
+
+"Exactly!" Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling lips;
+and he had gone away thinking: 'A fascinating woman!  What a waste!
+I'm glad the Dad left her that money.'  He had not seen her again,
+but every quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it to her
+bank, with a note to the Chelsea flat to say that he had done so;
+and always he had received a note in acknowledgment, generally from
+the flat, but sometimes from Italy; so that her personality had
+become embodied in slightly scented grey paper, an upright fine
+handwriting, and the words, 'Dear Cousin Jolyon.'  Man of property
+that he now was, the slender cheque he signed often gave rise to the
+thought: 'Well, I suppose she just manages'; sliding into a vague
+wonder how she was faring otherwise in a world of men not wont to
+let beauty go unpossessed.  At first Holly had spoken of her
+sometimes, but 'ladies in grey' soon fade from children's memories;
+and the tightening of June's lips in those first weeks after her
+grandfather's death whenever her former friend's name was mentioned,
+had discouraged allusion.  Only once, indeed, had June spoken
+definitely: "I've forgiven her.  I'm frightfully glad she's
+independent now...."
+
+On receiving Soames' card, Jolyon said to the maid--for he could
+not abide butlers--"Show him into the study, please, and say I'll
+be there in a minute"; and then he looked at Holly and asked:
+
+"Do you remember 'the lady in grey,' who used to give you music-
+lessons?"
+
+"Oh yes, why?  Has she come?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a coat,
+was silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not for those
+young ears.  His face, in fact, became whimsical perplexity
+incarnate while he journeyed towards the study.
+
+Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at
+the oak tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he
+thought: 'Who's that boy?  Surely they never had a child.'
+
+The elder figure turned.  The meeting of those two Forsytes of the
+second generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in
+the house built for the one and owned and occupied by the other,
+was marked by subtle defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at
+cordiality.  'Has he come about his wife?' Jolyon was thinking; and
+Soames, 'How shall I begin?' while Val, brought to break the ice,
+stood negligently scrutinising this 'bearded pard' from under his
+dark, thick eyelashes.
+
+"This is Val Dartie," said Soames, "my sister's son.  He's just
+going up to Oxford.  I thought I'd like him to know your boy."
+
+"Ah!  I'm sorry Jolly's away.  What college?"
+
+"B.N.C.," replied Val.
+
+"Jolly's at the 'House,' but he'll be delighted to look you up."
+
+"Thanks awfully."
+
+"Holly's in--if you could put up with a female relation, she'd show
+you round.  You'll find her in the hall if you go through the
+curtains.  I was just painting her."
+
+With another "Thanks, awfully!"  Val vanished, leaving the two
+cousins with the ice unbroken.
+
+"I see you've some drawings at the 'Water Colours,'" said Soames.
+
+Jolyon winced.  He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family at
+large for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his mind
+with Frith's 'Derby Day' and Landseer prints.  He had heard from
+June that Soames was a connoisseur, which made it worse.  He had
+become aware, too, of a curious sensation of repugnance.
+
+"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.
+
+"No," answered Soames between close lips, "not since--as a matter
+of fact, it's about that I've come.  You're her trustee, I'm told."
+
+Jolyon nodded.
+
+"Twelve years is a long time," said Soames rapidly: "I--I'm tired
+of it."
+
+Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:
+
+"Won't you smoke?"
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.
+
+"I wish to be free," said Soames abruptly.
+
+"I don't see her," murmured Jolyon through the fume of his
+cigarette.
+
+"But you know where she lives, I suppose?"
+
+Jolyon nodded.  He did not mean to give her address without
+permission.  Soames seemed to divine his thought.
+
+"I don't want her address," he said; "I know it."
+
+"What exactly do you want?"
+
+"She deserted me.  I want a divorce."
+
+"Rather late in the day, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames.  And there was a silence.
+
+"I don't know much about these things--at least, I've forgotten,"
+said Jolyon with a wry smile.  He himself had had to wait for death
+to grant him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon.  "Do you wish me
+to see her about it?"
+
+Soames raised his eyes to his cousin's face.  "I suppose there's
+someone," he said.
+
+A shrug moved Jolyon's shoulders.
+
+"I don't know at all.  I imagine you may have both lived as if the
+other were dead.  It's usual in these cases."
+
+Soames turned to the window.  A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed
+the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind.  Jolyon
+saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn
+towards the stables.  'I'm not going to run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds,' he thought.  'I must act for her.  The Dad would
+have wished that.'  And for a swift moment he seemed to see his
+father's figure in the old armchair, just beyond Soames, sitting
+with knees crossed, The Times in his hand.  It vanished.
+
+"My father was fond of her," he said quietly.
+
+"Why he should have been I don't know," Soames answered without
+looking round.  "She brought trouble to your daughter June; she
+brought trouble to everyone.  I gave her all she wanted.  I would
+have given her even--forgiveness--but she chose to leave me."
+
+In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice.
+What was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be sorry
+for him?
+
+"I can go and see her, if you like," he said.  "I suppose she might
+be glad of a divorce, but I know nothing."
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"Yes, please go.  As I say, I know her address; but I've no wish to
+see her."  His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were very
+dry.
+
+"You'll have some tea?" said Jolyon, stifling the words: 'And see
+the house.'  And he led the way into the hall.  When he had rung
+the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing
+to the wall.  He could not bear, somehow, that his work should be
+seen by Soames, who was standing there in the middle of the great
+room which had been designed expressly to afford wall space for his
+own pictures.  In his cousin's face, with its unseizable family
+likeness to himself, and its chinny, narrow, concentrated look,
+Jolyon saw that which moved him to the thought: 'That chap could
+never forget anything--nor ever give himself away.  He's pathetic!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE COLT AND THE FILLY
+
+
+When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was
+thinking: 'This is jolly dull!  Uncle Soames does take the bun.
+I wonder what this filly's like?'  He anticipated no pleasure from
+her society; and suddenly he saw her standing there looking at him.
+Why, she was pretty!  What luck!
+
+"I'm afraid you don't know me," he said.  "My name's Val Dartie--
+I'm once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know.  My
+mother's name was Forsyte."
+
+Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too
+shy to withdraw it, said:
+
+"I don't know any of my relations.  Are there many?"
+
+"Tons.  They're awful--most of them.  At least, I don't know--some
+of them.  One's relations always are, aren't they?"
+
+"I expect they think one awful too," said Holly.
+
+"I don't know why they should.  No one could think you awful, of
+course."
+
+Holly looked at him--the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave
+young Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.
+
+"I mean there are people and people," he added astutely.  "Your dad
+looks awfully decent, for instance."
+
+"Oh yes!" said Holly fervently; "he is."
+
+A flush mounted in Val's cheeks--that scene in the Pandemonium
+promenade--the dark man with the pink carnation developing into his
+own father!  "But you know what the Forsytes are," he said almost
+viciously.  "Oh! I forgot; you don't."
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit.  Look at Uncle
+Soames!"
+
+"I'd like to," said Holly.
+
+Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers.  "Oh! no," he
+said, "let's go out.  You'll see him quite soon enough.  What's
+your brother like?"
+
+Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without
+answering.  How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered
+anything, had been her lord, master, and ideal?
+
+"Does he sit on you?" said Val shrewdly.  "I shall be knowing him
+at Oxford.  Have you got any horses?"
+
+Holly nodded.  "Would you like to see the stables?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into the
+stable-yard.  There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy brown-and-
+white dog, so old that he did not get up, but faintly waved the
+tail curled over his back.
+
+"That's Balthasar," said Holly; "he's so old--awfully old, nearly
+as old as I am.  Poor old boy!  He's devoted to Dad."
+
+"Balthasar!  That's a rum name.  He isn't purebred you know."
+
+"No! but he's a darling," and she bent down to stroke the dog.
+Gentle and supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck and
+hands, she seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing slipped
+between him and all previous knowledge.
+
+"When grandfather died," she said, "he wouldn't eat for two days.
+He saw him die, you know."
+
+"Was that old Uncle Jolyon?  Mother always says he was a topper."
+
+"He was," said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.
+
+In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a
+long black tail and mane.  "This is mine--Fairy."
+
+"Ah!" said Val, "she's a jolly palfrey.  But you ought to bang her
+tail.  She'd look much smarter."  Then catching her wondering look,
+he thought suddenly: 'I don't know--anything she likes!'  And he
+took a long sniff of the stable air.  "Horses are ripping, aren't
+they?  My Dad..."  he stopped.
+
+"Yes?" said Holly.
+
+An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him--but not quite.
+"Oh!  I don't know he's often gone a mucker over them.  I'm jolly
+keen on them too--riding and hunting.  I like racing awfully, as
+well; I should like to be a gentleman rider."  And oblivious of the
+fact that he had but one more day in town, with two engagements, he
+plumped out:
+
+"I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in Richmond
+Park?"
+
+Holly clasped her hands.
+
+"Oh yes!  I simply love riding.  But there's Jolly's horse; why
+don't you ride him?  Here he is.  We could go after tea."
+
+Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.
+
+He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown boots
+and Bedford cords.
+
+"I don't much like riding his horse," he said.  "He mightn't like
+it.  Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect.  Not that I
+believe in buckling under to him, you know.  You haven't got an
+uncle, have you?  This is rather a good beast," he added,
+scrutinising Jolly's horse, a dark brown, which was showing the
+whites of its eyes.  "You haven't got any hunting here, I suppose?"
+
+"No; I don't know that I want to hunt.  It must be awfully
+exciting, of course; but it's cruel, isn't it?  June says so."
+
+"Cruel?" ejaculated Val.  "Oh! that's all rot.  Who's June?"
+
+"My sister--my half-sister, you know--much older than me."  She had
+put her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly's horse, and was rubbing
+her nose against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which
+seemed to have an hypnotic effect on the animal.  Val contemplated
+her cheek resting against the horse's nose, and her eyes gleaming
+round at him.  'She's really a duck,' he thought.
+
+They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by
+the dog Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth, and
+clearly expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.
+
+"This is a ripping place," said Val from under the oak tree, where
+they had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.
+
+"Yes," said Holly, and sighed.  "Of course I want to go everywhere.
+I wish I were a gipsy."
+
+"Yes, gipsies are jolly," replied Val, with a conviction which had
+just come to him; "you're rather like one, you know."
+
+Holly's face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded by
+the sun.
+
+"To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in the
+open--oh! wouldn't it be fun?"
+
+"Let's do it!" said Val.
+
+"Oh yes, let's!"
+
+"It'd be grand sport, just you and I."
+
+Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.
+
+"Well, we've got to do it," said Val obstinately, but reddening
+too.
+
+"I believe in doing things you want to do.  What's down there?"
+
+"The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm."
+
+"Let's go down!"
+
+Holly glanced back at the house.
+
+"It's tea-time, I expect; there's Dad beckoning."
+
+Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.
+
+When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two middle-aged
+Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical effect, and they
+became quite silent.  It was, indeed, an impressive spectacle.  The
+two were seated side by side on an arrangement in marqueterie which
+looked like three silvery pink chairs made one, with a low
+tea-table in front of them.  They seemed to have taken up that
+position, as far apart as the seat would permit, so that they need
+not look at each other too much; and they were eating and drinking
+rather than talking--Soames with his air of despising the tea-cake
+as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding himself slightly amusing.  To
+the casual eye neither would have seemed greedy, but both were
+getting through a good deal of sustenance.  The two young ones
+having been supplied with food, the process went on silent and
+absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, Jolyon said to
+Soames:
+
+"And how's Uncle James?"
+
+"Thanks, very shaky."
+
+"We're a wonderful family, aren't we?  The other day I was
+calculating the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my
+father's family Bible.  I make it eighty-four already, and five
+still living.  They ought to beat the record;" and looking
+whimsically at Soames, he added:
+
+"We aren't the men they were, you know."
+
+Soames smiled.  'Do you really think I shall admit that I'm not
+their equal'; he seemed to be saying, 'or that I've got to give up
+anything, especially life?'
+
+"We may live to their age, perhaps," pursued Jolyon, "but self-
+consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that's the difference
+between us.  We've lost conviction. How and when self-consciousness
+was born I never can make out.  My father had a little, but I don't
+believe any other of the old Forsytes ever had a scrap.  Never to
+see yourself as others see you, it's a wonderful preservative.  The
+whole history of the last century is in the difference between us.
+And between us and you," he added, gazing through a ring of smoke
+at Val and Holly, uncomfortable under his quizzical regard,
+"there'll be--another difference.  I wonder what."
+
+Soames took out his watch.
+
+"We must go," he said, "if we're to catch our train."
+
+"Uncle Soames never misses a train," muttered Val, with his mouth
+full.
+
+"Why should I?" Soames answered simply.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," grumbled Val, "other people do."
+
+At the front door he gave Holly's slim brown hand a long and
+surreptitious squeeze.
+
+"Look out for me to-morrow," he whispered; "three o'clock.  I'll
+wait for you in the road; it'll save time.  We'll have a ripping
+ride."  He gazed back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the
+principles of a man about town, would have waved his hand.  He felt
+in no mood to tolerate his uncle's conversation.  But he was not in
+danger.  Soames preserved a perfect muteness, busy with far-away
+thoughts.
+
+The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and a
+half which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days
+when he came down to watch with secret pride the building of the
+house--that house which was to have been the home of him and her
+from whom he was now going to seek release.  He looked back once,
+up that endless vista of autumn lane between the yellowing hedges.
+What an age ago!  "I don't want to see her," he had said to Jolyon.
+Was that true?  'I may have to,' he thought; and he shivered,
+seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say mean
+footsteps on one's grave.  A chilly world!  A queer world!  And
+glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: 'Wish I were his age!
+I wonder what she's like now!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP
+
+
+When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting, for
+daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving unconsciously
+a revival of that momentary vision of his father sitting in the old
+leather chair with his knees crossed and his straight eyes gazing
+up from under the dome of his massive brow.  Often in this little
+room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would catch a moment of
+communion with his father.  Not, indeed, that he had definitely any
+faith in the persistence of the human spirit--the feeling was not
+so logical--it was, rather, an atmospheric impact, like a scent, or
+one of those strong animistic impressions from forms, or effects of
+light, to which those with the artist's eye are especially prone.
+Here only--in this little unchanged room where his father had spent
+the most of his waking hours--could be retrieved the feeling that
+he was not quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old spirit
+and the warmth of his masterful lovability endured.
+
+What would his father be advising now, in this sudden recrudescence
+of an old tragedy--what would he say to this menace against her to
+whom he had taken such a fancy in the last weeks of his life?  'I
+must do my best for her,' thought Jolyon; 'he left her to me in his
+will.  But what is the best?'
+
+And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd
+common sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient chair
+and crossed his knees.  But he felt a mere shadow sitting there;
+nor did any inspiration come, while the fingers of the wind tapped
+on the darkening panes of the french-window.
+
+'Go and see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here?
+What's her life been?  What is it now, I wonder?  Beastly to rake
+up things at this time of day.'  Again the figure of his cousin
+standing with a hand on a front door of a fine olive-green leaped
+out, vivid, like one of those figures from old-fashioned clocks
+when the hour strikes; and his words sounded in Jolyon's ears
+clearer than any chime: "I manage my own affairs.  I've told you
+once, I tell you again: We are not at home."  The repugnance he had
+then felt for Soames--for his flat-cheeked, shaven face full of
+spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure
+slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not digest--
+came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase.  'I
+dislike him,' he thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me.
+And that's lucky; it'll make it easier for me to back his wife.'
+Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally averse
+from what he termed 'ructions'; unless angered, he conformed deeply
+to that classic description of the she-dog, 'Er'd ruther run than
+fight.'  A little smile became settled in his beard.  Ironical that
+Soames should come down here--to this house, built for himself!
+How he had gazed and gaped at this ruin of his past intention;
+furtively nosing at the walls and stairway, appraising everything!
+And intuitively Jolyon thought: 'I believe the fellow even now
+would like to be living here.  He could never leave off longing for
+what he once owned!  Well, I must act, somehow or other; but it's a
+bore--a great bore.'
+
+Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene
+would see him.
+
+The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so
+wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms.
+Rumours of war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the
+close of the summer holidays.  And the streets to Jolyon, who was
+not often up in town, had a feverish look, due to these new motor-
+cars and cabs, of which he disapproved aesthetically.  He counted
+these vehicles from his hansom, and made the proportion of them one
+in twenty.  'They were one in thirty about a year ago,' he thought;
+'they've come to stay.  Just so much more rattling round of wheels
+and general stink'--for he was one of those rather rare Liberals
+who object to anything new when it takes a material form; and he
+instructed his driver to get down to the river quickly, out of the
+traffic, desiring to look at the water through the mellowing screen
+of plane-trees.  At the little block of flats which stood back some
+fifty yards from the Embankment, he told the cabman to wait, and
+went up to the first floor.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Heron was at home!
+
+The effect of a settled if very modest income was at once apparent
+to him remembering the threadbare refinement in that tiny flat
+eight years ago when he announced her good fortune.  Everything was
+now fresh, dainty, and smelled of flowers.  The general effect was
+silvery with touches of black, hydrangea colour, and gold.  'A
+woman of great taste,' he thought.  Time had dealt gently with
+Jolyon, for he was a Forsyte.  But with Irene Time hardly seemed to
+deal at all, or such was his impression.  She appeared to him not a
+day older, standing there in mole-coloured velvet corduroy, with
+soft dark eyes and dark gold hair, with outstretched hand and a
+little smile.
+
+"Won't you sit down?"
+
+He had probably never occupied a chair with a fuller sense of
+embarrassment.
+
+"You look absolutely unchanged," he said.
+
+"And you look younger, Cousin Jolyon."
+
+Jolyon ran his hands through his hair, whose thickness was still a
+comfort to him.
+
+"I'm ancient, but I don't feel it.  That's one thing about paint-
+ing, it keeps you young.  Titian lived to ninety-nine, and had to
+have plague to kill him off.  Do you know, the first time I ever
+saw you I thought of a picture by him?"
+
+"When did you see me for the first time?"
+
+"In the Botanical Gardens."
+
+"How did you know me, if you'd never seen me before?"
+
+"By someone who came up to you."  He was looking at her hardily,
+but her face did not change; and she said quietly:
+
+"Yes; many lives ago."
+
+"What is your recipe for youth, Irene?"
+
+"People who don't live are wonderfully preserved."
+
+H'm! a bitter little saying!  People who don't live!  But an
+opening, and he took it.  "You remember my Cousin Soames?"
+
+He saw her smile faintly at that whimsicality, and at once went on:
+
+"He came to see me the day before yesterday!  He wants a divorce.
+Do you?"
+
+"I?"  The word seemed startled out of her.  "After twelve years?
+It's rather late.  Won't it be difficult?"
+
+Jolyon looked hard into her face.  "Unless...."  he said.
+
+"Unless I have a lover now.  But I have never had one since."
+
+What did he feel at the simplicity and candour of those words?
+Relief, surprise, pity!  Venus for twelve years without a lover!
+
+"And yet," he said, "I suppose you would give a good deal to be
+free, too?"
+
+"I don't know.  What does it matter, now?"
+
+"But if you were to love again?"
+
+"I should love."  In that simple answer she seemed to sum up the
+whole philosophy of one on whom the world had turned its back.
+
+"Well!  Is there anything you would like me to say to him?"
+
+"Only that I'm sorry he's not free.  He had his chance once.  I
+don't know why he didn't take it."
+
+"Because he was a Forsyte; we never part with things, you know,
+unless we want something in their place; and not always then."
+
+Irene smiled.  "Don't you, Cousin Jolyon?--I think you do."
+
+"Of course, I'm a bit of a mongrel--not quite a pure Forsyte.  I
+never take the halfpennies off my cheques, I put them on," said
+Jolyon uneasily.
+
+"Well, what does Soames want in place of me now?"
+
+"I don't know; perhaps children."
+
+She was silent for a little, looking down.
+
+"Yes," she murmured; "it's hard.  I would help him to be free if I
+could."
+
+Jolyon gazed into his hat, his embarrassment was increasing fast;
+so was his admiration, his wonder, and his pity.  She was so
+lovely, and so lonely; and altogether it was such a coil!
+
+"Well," he said, "I shall have to see Soames.  If there's anything
+I can do for you I'm always at your service.  You must think of me
+as a wretched substitute for my father.  At all events I'll let you
+know what happens when I speak to Soames.  He may supply the
+material himself."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You see, he has a lot to lose; and I have nothing.  I should like
+him to be free; but I don't see what I can do."
+
+"Nor I at the moment," said Jolyon, and soon after took his leave.
+He went down to his hansom.  Half-past three!  Soames would be at
+his office still.
+
+"To the Poultry," he called through the trap.  In front of the
+Houses of Parliament and in Whitehall, newsvendors were calling,
+"Grave situation in the Transvaal!" but the cries hardly roused
+him, absorbed in recollection of that very beautiful figure, of her
+soft dark glance, and the words: "I have never had one since."
+What on earth did such a woman do with her life, back-watered like
+this?  Solitary, unprotected, with every man's hand against her or
+rather--reaching out to grasp her at the least sign.  And year
+after year she went on like that!
+
+The word 'Poultry' above the passing citizens brought him back to
+reality.
+
+'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte,' in black letters on a ground the
+colour of peasoup, spurred him to a sort of vigour, and he went up
+the stone stairs muttering: "Fusty musty ownerships!  Well, we
+couldn't do without them!"
+
+"I want Mr. Soames Forsyte," he said to the boy who opened the
+door.
+
+"What name?"
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
+
+The youth looked at him curiously, never having seen a Forsyte with
+a beard, and vanished.
+
+The offices of 'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte' had slowly absorbed
+the offices of 'Tooting and Bowles,' and occupied the whole of the
+first floor.
+
+The firm consisted now of nothing but Soames and a number of
+managing and articled clerks.  The complete retirement of James
+some six years ago had accelerated business, to which the final
+touch of speed had been imparted when Bustard dropped off, worn
+out, as many believed, by the suit of 'Fryer versus Forsyte,' more
+in Chancery than ever and less likely to benefit its beneficiaries.
+Soames, with his saner grasp of actualities, had never permitted it
+to worry him; on the contrary, he had long perceived that
+Providence had presented him therein with L200 a year net in
+perpetuity, and--why not?
+
+When Jolyon entered, his cousin was drawing out a list of holdings
+in Consols, which in view of the rumours of war he was going to
+advise his companies to put on the market at once, before other
+companies did the same.  He looked round, sidelong, and said:
+
+"How are you?  Just one minute.  Sit down, won't you?" And having
+entered three amounts, and set a ruler to keep his place, he turned
+towards Jolyon, biting the side of his flat forefinger....
+
+"Yes?" he said.
+
+"I have seen her."
+
+Soames frowned.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She has remained faithful to memory."
+
+Having said that, Jolyon was ashamed.  His cousin had flushed a
+dusky yellowish red.  What had made him tease the poor brute!
+
+"I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free.  Twelve years is
+a long time.  You know your law, and what chance it gives you."
+Soames uttered a curious little grunt, and the two remained a full
+minute without speaking.  'Like wax!' thought Jolyon, watching that
+close face, where the flush was fast subsiding.  'He'll never give
+me a sign of what he's thinking, or going to do.  Like wax!'  And
+he transferred his gaze to a plan of that flourishing town, 'By-
+Street on Sea,' the future existence of which lay exposed on the
+wall to the possessive instincts of the firm's clients.  The whim-
+sical thought flashed through him: 'I wonder if I shall get a bill
+of costs for this--"To attending Mr. Jolyon Forsyte in the matter
+of my divorce, to receiving his account of his visit to my wife,
+and to advising him to go and see her again, sixteen and
+eightpence."'
+
+Suddenly Soames said: "I can't go on like this.  I tell you, I
+can't go on like this."  His eyes were shifting from side to side,
+like an animal's when it looks for way of escape.  'He really
+suffers,' thought Jolyon; 'I've no business to forget that, just
+because I don't like him.'
+
+"Surely," he said gently, "it lies with yourself.  A man can always
+put these things through if he'll take it on himself."
+
+Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come from
+somewhere very deep.
+
+"Why should I suffer more than I've suffered already?  Why should
+I?"
+
+Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders.  His reason agreed, his
+instinct rebelled; he could not have said why.
+
+"Your father," went on Soames, "took an interest in her--why,
+goodness knows!  And I suppose you do too?" he gave Jolyon a sharp
+look.  "It seems to me that one only has to do another person a
+wrong to get all the sympathy.  I don't know in what way I was to
+blame--I've never known.  I always treated her well.  I gave her
+everything she could wish for.  I wanted her."
+
+Again Jolyon's reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head.
+'What is it?' he thought; 'there must be something wrong in me.
+Yet if there is, I'd rather be wrong than right.'
+
+"After all," said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, "she was
+my wife."
+
+In a flash the thought went through his listener: 'There it is!
+Ownerships!  Well, we all own things.  But--human beings!  Pah!'
+
+"You have to look at facts," he said drily, "or rather the want of
+them."
+
+Soames gave him another quick suspicious look.
+
+"The want of them?" he said.  "Yes, but I am not so sure."
+
+"I beg your pardon," replied Jolyon; "I've told you what she said.
+It was explicit."
+
+"My experience has not been one to promote blind confidence in her
+word.  We shall see."
+
+Jolyon got up.
+
+"Good-bye," he said curtly.
+
+"Good-bye," returned Soames; and Jolyon went out trying to
+understand the look, half-startled, half-menacing, on his cousin's
+face.  He sought Waterloo Station in a disturbed frame of mind, as
+though the skin of his moral being had been scraped; and all the
+way down in the train he thought of Irene in her lonely flat, and
+of Soames in his lonely office, and of the strange paralysis of life
+that lay on them both.  'In chancery!'  he thought.  'Both their
+necks in chancery--and her's so pretty!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+VAL HEARS THE NEWS
+
+
+The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous
+feature in the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke two
+and kept one, it was the latter event which caused him, if
+anything, the greater surprise, while jogging back to town from
+Robin Hill after his ride with Holly.  She had been even prettier
+than he had thought her yesterday, on her silver-roan, long-tailed
+'palfrey'; and it seemed to him, self-critical in the brumous
+October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that only his boots
+had shone throughout their two-hour companionship.  He took out his
+new gold 'hunter'--present from James--and looked not at the time,
+but at sections of his face in the glittering back of its opened
+case.  He had a temporary spot over one eyebrow, and it displeased
+him, for it must have displeased her.  Crum never had any spots.
+Together with Crum rose the scene in the promenade of the
+Pandemonium.  To-day he had not had the faintest desire to unbosom
+himself to Holly about his father.  His father lacked poetry, the
+stirrings of which he was feeling for the first time in his
+nineteen years.  The Liberty, with Cynthia Dark, that almost
+mythical embodiment of rapture; the Pandemonium, with the woman of
+uncertain age--both seemed to Val completely 'off,' fresh from
+communion with this new, shy, dark-haired young cousin of his.  She
+rode 'Jolly well,' too, so that it had been all the more flattering
+that she had let him lead her where he would in the long gallops of
+Richmond Park, though she knew them so much better than he did.
+Looking back on it all, he was mystified by the barrenness of his
+speech; he felt that he could say 'an awful lot of fetching things'
+if he had but the chance again, and the thought that he must go
+back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and to Oxford on the twelfth--
+'to that beastly exam,' too--without the faintest chance of first
+seeing her again, caused darkness to settle on his spirit even more
+quickly than on the evening.  He should write to her, however, and
+she had promised to answer.  Perhaps, too, she would come up to
+Oxford to see her brother.  That thought was like the first star,
+which came out as he rode into Padwick's livery stables in the
+purlieus of Sloane Square.  He got off and stretched himself
+luxuriously, for he had ridden some twenty-five good miles.  The
+Dartie within him made him chaffer for five minutes with young
+Padwick concerning the favourite for the Cambridgeshire; then with
+the words, "Put the gee down to my account," he walked away, a
+little wide at the knees, and flipping his boots with his knotty
+little cane.  'I don't feel a bit inclined to go out,' he thought.
+'I wonder if mother will stand fizz for my last night!'  With
+'fizz' and recollection, he could well pass a domestic evening.
+
+When he came down, speckless after his bath, he found his mother
+scrupulous in a low evening dress, and, to his annoyance, his Uncle
+Soames.  They stopped talking when he came in; then his uncle said:
+
+"He'd better be told."
+
+At those words, which meant something about his father, of course,
+Val's first thought was of Holly.  Was it anything beastly?  His
+mother began speaking.
+
+"Your father," she said in her fashionably appointed voice, while
+her fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, "your
+father, my dear boy, has--is not at Newmarket; he's on his way to
+South America.  He--he's left us."
+
+Val looked from her to Soames.  Left them!  Was he sorry?  Was he
+fond of his father?  It seemed to him that he did not know.  Then,
+suddenly--as at a whiff of gardenias and cigars--his heart twitched
+within him, and he was sorry.  One's father belonged to one, could
+not go off in this fashion--it was not done!  Nor had he always
+been the 'bounder' of the Pandemonium promenade.  There were
+precious memories of tailors' shops and horses, tips at school, and
+general lavish kindness, when in luck.
+
+"But why?" he said.  Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he had
+asked.  The mask of his mother's face was all disturbed; and he
+burst out:
+
+"All right, Mother, don't tell me!  Only, what does it mean?"
+
+"A divorce, Val, I'm afraid."
+
+Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his uncle--
+that uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a guarantee
+against the consequences of having a father, even against the
+Dartie blood in his own veins.  The flat-checked visage seemed to
+wince, and this upset him.
+
+"It won't be public, will it?"
+
+So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued
+to the unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public
+Press.
+
+"Can't it be done quietly somehow?  It's so disgusting for--for
+mother, and--and everybody."
+
+"Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure."
+
+"Yes--but, why is it necessary at all?  Mother doesn't want to
+marry again."
+
+Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his
+schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of--Holly!
+Unbearable!  What was to be gained by it?
+
+"Do you, Mother?" he said sharply.
+
+Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the
+one she loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire
+chair in which she had been sitting.  She saw that her son would be
+against her unless he was told everything; and, yet, how could she
+tell him?  Thus, still plucking at the green brocade, she stared
+at Soames.  Val, too, stared at Soames.  Surely this embodiment of
+respectability and the sense of property could not wish to bring
+such a slur on his own sister!
+
+Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth
+surface of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his
+nephew, he began:
+
+"You don't understand what your mother has had to put up with these
+twenty years.  This is only the last straw, Val."  And glancing up
+sideways at Winifred, he added:
+
+"Shall I tell him?"
+
+Winifred was silent.  If he were not told, he would be against her!
+Yet, how dreadful to be told such things of his own father!
+Clenching her lips, she nodded.
+
+Soames spoke in a rapid, even voice:
+
+"He has always been a burden round your mother's neck.  She has
+paid his debts over and over again; he has often been drunk, abused
+and threatened her; and now he is gone to Buenos Aires with a
+dancer."  And, as if distrusting the efficacy of those words on the
+boy, he went on quickly:
+
+"He took your mother's pearls to give to her."
+
+Val jerked up his hand, then.  At that signal of distress Winifred
+cried out:
+
+"That'll do, Soames--stop!"
+
+In the boy, the Dartie and the Forsyte were struggling.  For debts,
+drink, dancers, he had a certain sympathy; but the pearls--no!  That
+was too much!  And suddenly he found his mother's hand squeezing
+his.
+
+"You see," he heard Soames say, "we can't have it all begin over
+again.  There's a limit; we must strike while the iron's hot."
+
+Val freed his hand.
+
+"But--you're--never going to bring out that about the pearls!  I
+couldn't stand that--I simply couldn't!"
+
+Winifred cried out:
+
+"No, no, Val--oh no!  That's only to show you how impossible your
+father is!"  And his uncle nodded.  Somewhat assuaged, Val took out
+a cigarette.  His father had bought him that thin curved case.  Oh!
+it was unbearable--just as he was going up to Oxford!
+
+"Can't mother be protected without?" he said.  "I could look after
+her.  It could always be done later if it was really necessary."
+
+A smile played for a moment round Soames' lips, and became bitter.
+
+"You don't know what you're talking of; nothing's so fatal as delay
+in such matters."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I tell you, boy, nothing's so fatal.  I know from experience."
+
+His voice had the ring of exasperation.  Val regarded him round-
+eyed, never having known his uncle express any sort of feeling.
+Oh! Yes--he remembered now--there had been an Aunt Irene, and
+something had happened--something which people kept dark; he had
+heard his father once use an unmentionable word of her.
+
+"I don't want to speak ill of your father," Soames went on
+doggedly, "but I know him well enough to be sure that he'll be back
+on your mother's hands before a year's over.  You can imagine what
+that will mean to her and to all of you after this.  The only thing
+is to cut the knot for good."
+
+In spite of himself, Val was impressed; and, happening to look at
+his mother's face, he got what was perhaps his first real insight
+into the fact that his own feelings were not always what mattered
+most.
+
+"All right, mother," he said; "we'll back you up.  Only I'd like to
+know when it'll be.  It's my first term, you know.  I don't want to
+be up there when it comes off."
+
+"Oh! my dear boy," murmured Winifred, "it is a bore for you."  So,
+by habit, she phrased what, from the expression of her face, was
+the most poignant regret.  "When will it be, Soames?"
+
+"Can't tell--not for months.  We must get restitution first."
+
+'What the deuce is that?' thought Val.  'What silly brutes lawyers
+are!  Not for months!  I know one thing: I'm not going to dine in!'
+And he said:
+
+"Awfully sorry, mother, I've got to go out to dinner now."
+
+Though it was his last night, Winifred nodded almost gratefully;
+they both felt that they had gone quite far enough in the
+expression of feeling.
+
+Val sought the misty freedom of Green Street, reckless and
+depressed.  And not till he reached Piccadilly did he discover that
+he had only eighteen-pence.  One couldn't dine off eighteen-pence,
+and he was very hungry.  He looked longingly at the windows of the
+Iseeum Club, where he had often eaten of the best with his father!
+Those pearls!  There was no getting over them!  But the more he
+brooded and the further he walked the hungrier he naturally became.
+Short of trailing home, there were only two places where he could
+go--his grandfather's in Park Lane, and Timothy's in the Bayswater
+Road.  Which was the less deplorable?  At his grandfather's he
+would probably get a better dinner on the spur of the moment.  At
+Timothy's they gave you a jolly good feed when they expected you,
+not otherwise.  He decided on Park Lane, not unmoved by the thought
+that to go up to Oxford without affording his grandfather a chance
+to tip him was hardly fair to either of them.  His mother would
+hear he had been there, of course, and might think it funny; but he
+couldn't help that.  He rang the bell.
+
+"Hullo, Warmson, any dinner for me, d'you think?"
+
+"They're just going in, Master Val.  Mr. Forsyte will be very glad
+to see you.  He was saying at lunch that he never saw you
+nowadays."
+
+Val grinned.
+
+"Well, here I am.  Kill the fatted calf, Warmson, let's have fizz."
+
+Warmson smiled faintly--in his opinion Val was a young limb.
+
+"I will ask Mrs. Forsyte, Master Val."
+
+"I say," Val grumbled, taking off his overcoat, "I'm not at school
+any more, you know."
+
+Warmson, not without a sense of humour, opened the door beyond the
+stag's-horn coat stand, with the words:
+
+"Mr. Valerus, ma'am."
+
+"Confound him!" thought Val, entering.
+
+A warm embrace, a "Well, Val!" from Emily, and a rather quavery "So
+there you are at last!" from James, restored his sense of dignity.
+
+"Why didn't you let us know?  There's only saddle of mutton.
+Champagne, Warmson," said Emily.  And they went in.
+
+At the great dining-table, shortened to its utmost, under which so
+many fashionable legs had rested, James sat at one end, Emily at
+the other, Val half-way between them; and something of the
+loneliness of his grandparents, now that all their four children
+were flown, reached the boy's spirit.  'I hope I shall kick the
+bucket long before I'm as old as grandfather,' he thought.  'Poor
+old chap, he's as thin as a rail!'  And lowering his voice while
+his grandfather and Warmson were in discussion about sugar in the
+soup, he said to Emily:
+
+"It's pretty brutal at home, Granny.  I suppose you know."
+
+"Yes, dear boy."
+
+"Uncle Soames was there when I left.  I say, isn't there anything
+to be done to prevent a divorce?  Why is he so beastly keen on it?"
+
+"Hush, my dear!" murmured Emily; "we're keeping it from your
+grandfather."
+
+James' voice sounded from the other end.
+
+"What's that?  What are you talking about?"
+
+"About Val's college," returned Emily.  "Young Pariser was there,
+James; you remember--he nearly broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
+afterwards."
+
+James muttered that he did not know--Val must look after himself up
+there, or he'd get into bad ways.  And he looked at his grandson
+with gloom, out of which affection distrustfully glimmered.
+
+"What I'm afraid of," said Val to his plate, "is of being hard up,
+you know."
+
+By instinct he knew that the weak spot in that old man was fear of
+insecurity for his grandchildren.
+
+"Well," said James, and the soup in his spoon dribbled over,
+"you'll have a good allowance; but you must keep within it."
+
+"Of course," murmured Val; "if it is good.  How much will it be,
+Grandfather?"
+
+"Three hundred and fifty; it's too much.  I had next to nothing at
+your age."
+
+Val sighed.  He had hoped for four, and been afraid of three.  "I
+don't know what your young cousin has," said James; "he's up there.
+His father's a rich man."
+
+"Aren't you?" asked Val hardily.
+
+"I?" replied James, flustered.  "I've got so many expenses.  Your
+father...." and he was silent.
+
+"Cousin Jolyon's got an awfully jolly place.  I went down there
+with Uncle Soames--ripping stables."
+
+"Ah!" murmured James profoundly.  "That house--I knew how it would
+be!"  And he lapsed into gloomy meditation over his fish-bones.
+His son's tragedy, and the deep cleavage it had caused in the
+Forsyte family, had still the power to draw him down into a
+whirlpool of doubts and misgivings.  Val, who hankered to talk of
+Robin Hill, because Robin Hill meant Holly, turned to Emily and
+said:
+
+"Was that the house built for Uncle Soames?"  And, receiving her
+nod, went on: "I wish you'd tell me about him, Granny.  What became
+of Aunt Irene?  Is she still going?  He seems awfully worked-up
+about something to-night."
+
+Emily laid her finger on her lips, but the word Irene had caught
+James' ear.
+
+"What's that?" he said, staying a piece of mutton close to his
+lips.  "Who's been seeing her?  I knew we hadn't heard the last of
+that."
+
+"Now, James," said Emily, "eat your dinner.  Nobody's been seeing
+anybody."
+
+James put down his fork.
+
+"There you go," he said.  "I might die before you'd tell me of it.
+Is Soames getting a divorce?"
+
+"Nonsense," said Emily with incomparable aplomb; "Soames is much
+too sensible."
+
+James had sought his own throat, gathering the long white whiskers
+together on the skin and bone of it.
+
+"She--she was always...." he said, and with that enigmatic remark
+the conversation lapsed, for Warmson had returned.  But later, when
+the saddle of mutton had been succeeded by sweet, savoury, and
+dessert, and Val had received a cheque for twenty pounds and his
+grandfather's kiss--like no other kiss in the world, from lips
+pushed out with a sort of fearful suddenness, as if yielding to
+weakness--he returned to the charge in the hall.
+
+"Tell us about Uncle Soames, Granny.  Why is he so keen on mother's
+getting a divorce?"
+
+"Your Uncle Soames," said Emily, and her voice had in it an
+exaggerated assurance, "is a lawyer, my dear boy.  He's sure to
+know best."
+
+"Is he?" muttered Val.  "But what did become of Aunt Irene?  I
+remember she was jolly good-looking."
+
+"She--er...."  said Emily, "behaved very badly.  We don't talk
+about it."
+
+"Well, I don't want everybody at Oxford to know about our affairs,"
+ejaculated Val; "it's a brutal idea.  Why couldn't father be pre-
+vented without its being made public?"
+
+Emily sighed.  She had always lived rather in an atmosphere of
+divorce, owing to her fashionable proclivities--so many of those
+whose legs had been under her table having gained a certain notor-
+iety.  When, however, it touched her own family, she liked it no
+better than other people.  But she was eminently practical, and a
+woman of courage, who never pursued a shadow in preference to its
+substance.
+
+"Your mother," she said, "will be happier if she's quite free, Val.
+Good-night, my dear boy; and don't wear loud waistcoats up at
+Oxford, they're not the thing just now.  Here's a little present."
+
+With another five pounds in his hand, and a little warmth in his
+heart, for he was fond of his grandmother, he went out into Park
+Lane.  A wind had cleared the mist, the autumn leaves were
+rustling, and the stars were shining.  With all that money in his
+pocket an impulse to 'see life' beset him; but he had not gone
+forty yards in the direction of Piccadilly when Holly's shy face,
+and her eyes with an imp dancing in their gravity, came up before
+him, and his hand seemed to be tingling again from the pressure of
+her warm gloved hand.  'No, dash it!'  he thought, 'I'm going
+home!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SOAMES ENTERTAINS THE FUTURE
+
+
+It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and
+summer lingered below the yellowing leaves.  Soames took many looks
+at the day from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that Sunday
+morning.
+
+With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat, and
+equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them
+on the river.  Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he could not
+tell whether or no he wished to take Annette alone.  She was so
+very pretty--could he trust himself not to say irrevocable words,
+passing beyond the limits of discretion?  Roses on the veranda were
+still in bloom, and the hedges ever-green, so that there was almost
+nothing of middle-aged autumn to chill the mood; yet was he
+nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his powers to steer just
+the right course.  This visit had been planned to produce in
+Annette and her mother a due sense of his possessions, so that they
+should be ready to receive with respect any overture he might later
+be disposed to make.  He dressed with great care, making himself
+neither too young nor too old, very thankful that his hair was
+still thick and smooth and had no grey in it.  Three times he went
+up to his picture-gallery.  If they had any knowledge at all, they
+must see at once that his collection alone was worth at least
+thirty thousand pounds.  He minutely inspected, too, the pretty
+bedroom overlooking the river where they would take off their hats.
+It would be her bedroom if--if the matter went through, and she
+became his wife.  Going up to the dressing-table he passed his hand
+over the lilac-coloured pincushion, into which were stuck all kinds
+of pins; a bowl of pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his head
+turn just a little.  His wife!  If only the whole thing could be
+settled out of hand, and there was not the nightmare of this
+divorce to be gone through first; and with gloom puckered on his
+forehead, he looked out at the river shining beyond the roses and
+the lawn.  Madame Lamotte would never resist this prospect for her
+child; Annette would never resist her mother.  If only he were
+free!  He drove to the station to meet them.  What taste French-
+women had!  Madame Lamotte was in black with touches of lilac
+colour, Annette in greyish lilac linen, with cream coloured gloves
+and hat.  Rather pale she looked and Londony; and her blue eyes
+were demure.  Waiting for them to come down to lunch, Soames stood
+in the open french-window of the diningroom moved by that sensuous
+delight in sunshine and flowers and trees which only came to the
+full when youth and beauty were there to share it with one.  He had
+ordered the lunch with intense consideration; the wine was a very
+special Sauterne, the whole appointments of the meal perfect, the
+coffee served on the veranda super-excellent.  Madame Lamotte
+accepted creme de menthe; Annette refused.  Her manners were
+charming, with just a suspicion of 'the conscious beauty' creeping
+into them.  'Yes,' thought Soames, 'another year of London and that
+sort of life, and she'll be spoiled.'
+
+Madame was in sedate French raptures.  "Adorable!  Le soleil est si
+bon!  How everything is chic, is it not, Annette?  Monsieur is a
+real Monte Cristo."  Annette murmured assent, with a look up at
+Soames which he could not read.  He proposed a turn on the river.
+But to punt two persons when one of them looked so ravishing on
+those Chinese cushions was merely to suffer from a sense of lost
+opportunity; so they went but a short way towards Pangbourne,
+drifting slowly back, with every now and then an autumn leaf
+dropping on Annette or on her mother's black amplitude.  And Soames
+was not happy, worried by the thought: 'How--when--where--can I
+say--what?' They did not yet even know that he was married.  To
+tell them he was married might jeopardise his every chance; yet, if
+he did not definitely make them understand that he wished for
+Annette's hand, it would be dropping into some other clutch before
+he was free to claim it.
+
+At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the
+Transvaal.
+
+"There'll be war," he said.
+
+Madame Lamotte lamented.
+
+"Ces pauvres gens bergers!"  Could they not be left to themselves?
+
+Soames smiled--the question seemed to him absurd.
+
+Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British could
+not abandon their legitimate commercial interests.
+
+"Ah! that!"  But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a
+little hypocrite.  They were talking of justice and the Uitlanders,
+not of business.  Monsieur was the first who had spoken to her of
+that.
+
+"The Boers are only half-civilised," remarked Soames; "they stand
+in the way of progress.  It will never do to let our suzerainty
+go."
+
+"What does that mean to say?  Suzerainty!"
+
+"What a strange word!"  Soames became eloquent, roused by these
+threats to the principle of possession, and stimulated by Annette's
+eyes fixed on him.  He was delighted when presently she said:
+
+"I think Monsieur is right.  They should be taught a lesson."  She
+was sensible!
+
+"Of course," he said, "we must act with moderation.  I'm no jingo.
+We must be firm without bullying.  Will you come up and see my
+pictures?"  Moving from one to another of these treasures, he soon
+perceived that they knew nothing.  They passed his last Mauve, that
+remarkable study of a 'Hay-cart going Home,' as if it were a
+lithograph.  He waited almost with awe to see how they would view
+the jewel of his collection--an Israels whose price he had watched
+ascending till he was now almost certain it had reached top value,
+and would be better on the market again.  They did not view it at
+all.  This was a shock; and yet to have in Annette a virgin taste
+to form would be better than to have the silly, half-baked pre-
+dilections of the English middle-class to deal with.  At the end of
+the gallery was a Meissonier of which he was rather ashamed--
+Meissonier was so steadily going down.  Madame Lamotte stopped
+before it.
+
+"Meissonier!  Ah! What a jewel!"  Soames took advantage of that
+moment.  Very gently touching Annette's arm, he said:
+
+"How do you like my place, Annette?"
+
+She did not shrink, did not respond; she looked at him full, looked
+down, and murmured:
+
+"Who would not like it?  It is so beautiful!"
+
+"Perhaps some day--" Soames said, and stopped.
+
+So pretty she was, so self-possessed--she frightened him.  Those
+cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate
+curves--she was a standing temptation to indiscretion!  No!  No!
+One must be sure of one's ground--much surer!  'If I hold off,' he
+thought, 'it will tantalise her.'  And he crossed over to Madame
+Lamotte, who was still in front of the Meissonier.
+
+"Yes, that's quite a good example of his later work.  You must come
+again, Madame, and see them lighted up.  You must both come and
+spend a night."
+
+Enchanted, would it not be beautiful to see them lighted?  By
+moonlight too, the river must be ravishing!
+
+Annette murmured:
+
+"Thou art sentimental, Maman!"
+
+Sentimental!  That black-robed, comely, substantial Frenchwoman of
+the world!  And suddenly he was certain as he could be that there
+was no sentiment in either of them.  All the better.  Of what use
+sentiment?  And yet....!
+
+He drove to the station with them, and saw them into the train.  To
+the tightened pressure of his hand it seemed that Annette's fingers
+responded just a little; her face smiled at him through the dark.
+
+He went back to the carriage, brooding.  "Go on home, Jordan," he
+said to the coachman; "I'll walk."  And he strode out into the
+darkening lanes, caution and the desire of possession playing
+see-saw within him.  'Bon soir, monsieur!'  How softly she had said
+it.  To know what was in her mind!  The French--they were like
+cats--one could tell nothing!  But--how pretty!  What a perfect
+young thing to hold in one's arms!  What a mother for his heir!
+And he thought, with a smile, of his family and their surprise at a
+French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would play with
+it and buffet it confound them!
+
+The, poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted.  Shadows
+deepened in the water.  'I will and must be free,' he thought.  'I
+won't hang about any longer.  I'll go and see Irene.  If you want
+things done, do them yourself.  I must live again--live and move
+and have my being.'  And in echo to that queer biblicality church-
+bells chimed the call to evening prayer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AND VISITS THE PAST
+
+
+On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do
+what required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything
+he had yet undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one
+other action.  He chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene
+was more likely to be in, but mainly because he had failed to find
+sufficient resolution by daylight, had needed wine to give him
+extra daring.
+
+He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old
+Church, uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived.
+He found it hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read
+the name, 'Mrs. Irene Heron'--Heron, forsooth!  Her maiden name: so
+she used that again, did she?--he stepped back into the road to
+look up at the windows of the first floor.  Light was coming
+through in the corner fiat, and he could hear a piano being played.
+He had never had a love of music, had secretly borne it a grudge in
+the old days when so often she had turned to her piano, making of
+it a refuge place into which she knew he could not enter.  Repulse!
+The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at last open!
+Bitter memory came with that sound.  It must be she playing, and
+thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more undecided than
+ever.  Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his tongue felt
+dry, his heart beat fast.  'I have no cause to be afraid,' he
+thought.  And then the lawyer stirred within him.  Was he doing a
+foolish thing?  Ought he not to have arranged a formal meeting in
+the presence of her trustee?  No!  Not before that fellow Jolyon,
+who sympathised with her!  Never!  He crossed back into the
+doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of his heart,
+mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell.  When the
+door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by the scent
+which came--that perfume--from away back in the past, bringing
+muffled remembrance: fragrance of a drawing-room he used to enter,
+of a house he used to own--perfume of dried rose-leaves and honey!
+
+"Say, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "your mistress will see me, I know."
+He had thought this out; she would think it was Jolyon!
+
+When the maid was gone and he was alone in the tiny hall, where the
+light was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls, carpet,
+everything was silvery, making the walled-in space all ghostly, he
+could only think ridiculously: 'Shall I go in with my overcoat on,
+or take it off?' The music ceased; the maid said from the doorway:
+
+"Will you walk in, sir?"
+
+Soames walked in.  He noted mechanically that all was still
+silvery, and that the upright piano was of satinwood.  She had
+risen and stood recoiled against it; her hand, placed on the keys
+as if groping for support, had struck a sudden discord, held for a
+moment, and released.  The light from the shaded piano-candle fell
+on her neck, leaving her face rather in shadow.  She was in a black
+evening dress, with a sort of mantilla over her shoulders--he did
+not remember ever having seen her in black, and the thought passed
+through him: 'She dresses even when she's alone.'
+
+"You!" he heard her whisper.
+
+Many times Soames had rehearsed this scene in fancy.  Rehearsal
+served him not at all.  He simply could not speak.  He had never
+thought that the sight of this woman whom he had once so
+passionately desired, so completely owned, and whom he had not seen
+for twelve years, could affect him in this way.  He had imagined
+himself speaking and acting, half as man of business, half as
+judge.  And now it was as if he were in the presence not of a mere
+woman and erring wife, but of some force, subtle and elusive as
+atmo-sphere itself within him and outside.  A kind of defensive
+irony welled up in him.
+
+"Yes, it's a queer visit!  I hope you're well."
+
+"Thank you.  Will you sit down?"
+
+She had moved away from the piano, and gone over to a window-seat,
+sinking on to it, with her hands clasped in her lap.  Light fell on
+her there, so that Soames could see her face, eyes, hair, strangely
+as he remembered them, strangely beautiful.
+
+He sat down on the edge of a satinwood chair, upholstered with
+silver-coloured stuff, close to where he was standing.
+
+"You have not changed," he said.
+
+"No?  What have you come for?"
+
+"To discuss things."
+
+"I have heard what you want from your cousin."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I am willing.  I have always been."
+
+The sound of her voice, reserved and close, the sight of her figure
+watchfully poised, defensive, was helping him now.  A thousand
+memories of her, ever on the watch against him, stirred, and....
+
+"Perhaps you will be good enough, then, to give me information on
+which I can act.  The law must be complied with."
+
+"I have none to give you that you don't know of."
+
+"Twelve years!  Do you suppose I can believe that?"
+
+"I don't suppose you will believe anything I say; but it's the
+truth."
+
+Soames looked at her hard.  He had said that she had not changed;
+now he perceived that she had.  Not in face, except that it was
+more beautiful; not in form, except that it was a little fuller--
+no!  She had changed spiritually.  There was more of her, as it
+were, something of activity and daring, where there had been sheer
+passive resistance.  'Ah!' he thought, 'that's her independent
+income!  Confound Uncle Jolyon!'
+
+"I suppose you're comfortably off now?" he said.
+
+"Thank you, yes."
+
+"Why didn't you let me provide for you?  I would have, in spite of
+everything."
+
+A faint smile came on her lips; but she did not answer.
+
+"You are still my wife," said Soames.  Why he said that, what he
+meant by it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after.  It was a
+truism almost preposterous, but its effect was startling.  She rose
+from the window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly still,
+looking at him.  He could see her bosom heaving.  Then she turned
+to the window and threw it open.
+
+"Why do that?" he said sharply.  "You'll catch cold in that dress.
+I'm not dangerous."  And he uttered a little sad laugh.
+
+She echoed it--faintly, bitterly.
+
+"It was--habit."
+
+"Rather odd habit," said Soames as bitterly.  "Shut the window!"
+
+She shut it and sat down again.  She had developed power, this
+woman--this--wife of his!  He felt it issuing from her as she sat
+there, in a sort of armour.  And almost unconsciously he rose and
+moved nearer; he wanted to see the expression on her face.  Her
+eyes met his unflinching.  Heavens! how clear they were, and what
+a dark brown against that white skin, and that burnt-amber hair!
+And how white her shoulders.
+
+Funny sensation this!  He ought to hate her.
+
+"You had better tell me," he said; "it's to your advantage to be
+free as well as to mine.  That old matter is too old."
+
+"I have told you."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me there has been nothing--nobody?"
+
+"Nobody.  You must go to your own life."
+
+Stung by that retort, Soames moved towards the piano and back to
+the hearth, to and fro, as he had been wont in the old days in
+their drawing-room when his feelings were too much for him.
+
+"That won't do," he said.  "You deserted me.  In common justice
+it's for you...."
+
+He saw her shrug those white shoulders, heard her murmur:
+
+"Yes.  Why didn't you divorce me then?  Should I have cared?"
+
+He stopped, and looked at her intently with a sort of curiosity.
+What on earth did she do with herself, if she really lived quite
+alone?  And why had he not divorced her?  The old feeling that she
+had never understood him, never done him justice, bit him while he
+stared at her.
+
+"Why couldn't you have made me a good wife?" he said.
+
+"Yes; it was a crime to marry you.  I have paid for it.  You will
+find some way perhaps.  You needn't mind my name, I have none to
+lose.  Now I think you had better go."
+
+A sense of defeat--of being defrauded of his self-justification,
+and of something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset
+Soames like the breath of a cold fog.  Mechanically he reached up,
+took from the mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, and
+said:
+
+"Lowestoft.  Where did you get this?  I bought its fellow at
+Jobson's."  And, visited by the sudden memory of how, those many
+years ago, he and she had bought china together, he remained
+staring at the little bowl, as if it contained all the past.  Her
+voice roused him.
+
+"Take it.  I don't want it."
+
+Soames put it back on the shelf.
+
+"Will you shake hands?" he said.
+
+A faint smile curved her lips.  She held out her hand.  It was cold
+to his rather feverish touch.  'She's made of ice,' he thought--
+'she was always made of ice!'  But even as that thought darted
+through him, his senses were assailed by the perfume of her dress
+and body, as though the warmth within her, which had never been for
+him, were struggling to show its presence.  And he turned on his
+heel.  He walked out and away, as if someone with a whip were after
+him, not even looking for a cab, glad of the empty Embankment and
+the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows of the plane-tree
+leaves--confused, flurried, sore at heart, and vaguely disturbed,
+as though he had made some deep mistake whose consequences he could
+not foresee.  And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him
+if instead of, 'I think you had better go,' she had said, 'I think
+you had better stay!'  What should he have felt, what would he have
+done?  That cursed attraction of her was there for him even now,
+after all these years of estrangement and bitter thoughts.  It was
+there, ready to mount to his head at a sign, a touch.  'I was a
+fool to go!'  he muttered.  'I've advanced nothing.  Who could
+imagine?  I never thought!'  Memory, flown back to the first years
+of his marriage, played him torturing tricks.  She had not deserved
+to keep her beauty--the beauty he had owned and known so well.  And
+a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of his own admiration welled
+up in him.  Most men would have hated the sight of her, as she had
+deserved.  She had spoiled his life, wounded his pride to death,
+defrauded him of a son.  And yet the mere sight of her, cold and
+resisting as ever, had this power to upset him utterly!  It was
+some damned magnetism she had!  And no wonder if, as she asserted;
+she had lived untouched these last twelve years.  So Bosinney--
+cursed be his memory!--had lived on all this time with her!  Soames
+could not tell whether he was glad of that knowledge or no.
+
+Nearing his Club at last he stopped to buy a paper.  A headline
+ran: 'Boers reported to repudiate suzerainty!'  Suzerainty!  'Just
+like her!' he thought: 'she always did.  Suzerainty!  I still have
+it by rights.  She must be awfully lonely in that wretched little
+flat!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ON FORSYTE 'CHANGE
+
+
+Soames belonged to two clubs, 'The Connoisseurs,' which he put on
+his cards and seldom visited, and 'The Remove,' which he did not
+put on his cards and frequented.  He had joined this Liberal
+institution five years ago, having made sure that its members were
+now nearly all sound Conservatives in heart and pocket, if not in
+principle.  Uncle Nicholas had put him up.  The fine reading-room
+was decorated in the Adam style.
+
+On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news about
+the Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down seven-sixteenths
+since the morning.  He was turning away to seek the reading-room
+when a voice behind him said:
+
+"Well, Soames, that went off all right."
+
+It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away
+collar, with a black tie passed through a ring.  Heavens!  How
+young and dapper he looked at eighty-two!
+
+"I think Roger'd have been pleased," his uncle went on.  "The thing
+was very well done.  Blackley's?  I'll make a note of them.
+Buxton's done me no good.  These Boers are upsetting me--that
+fellow Chamberlain's driving the country into war.  What do you
+think?"
+
+"Bound to come," murmured Soames.
+
+Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, cleanshaven cheeks, very
+rosy after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his lips.
+This business had revived all his Liberal principles.
+
+"I mistrust that chap; he's a stormy petrel.  House-property will
+go down if there's war.  You'll have trouble with Roger's estate.
+I often told him he ought to get out of some of his houses.  He was
+an opinionated beggar."
+
+'There was a pair of you!' thought Soames.  But he never argued
+with an uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as 'a
+long-headed chap,' and the legal care of their property.
+
+"They tell me at Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice,
+"that Dartie has gone off at last.  That'll be a relief to your
+father.  He was a rotten egg."
+
+Again Soames nodded.  If there was a subject on which the Forsytes
+really agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.
+
+"You take care," said Nicholas, "or he'll turn up again.  Winifred
+had better have the tooth out, I should say.  No use preserving
+what's gone bad."
+
+Soames looked at him sideways.  His nerves, exacerbated by the
+interview he had just come through, disposed him to see a personal
+allusion in those words.
+
+"I'm advising her," he said shortly.
+
+"Well," said Nicholas, "the brougham's waiting; I must get home.
+I'm very poorly.  Remember me to your father."
+
+And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down the
+steps at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat by the
+junior porter.
+
+'I've never known Uncle Nicholas other than "very poorly,"' mused
+Soames, 'or seen him look other than everlasting.  What a family!
+Judging by him, I've got thirty-eight years of health before me.
+Well, I'm not going to waste them.'  And going over to a mirror he
+stood looking at his face.  Except for a line or two, and three or
+four grey hairs in his little dark moustache, had he aged any more
+than Irene?  The prime of life--he and she in the very prime of
+life!  And a fantastic thought shot into his mind.  Absurd!
+Idiotic!  But again it came.  And genuinely alarmed by the recur-
+rence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which presages a
+feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine.  Eleven stone!
+He had not varied two pounds in twenty years.  What age was she?
+Nearly thirty-seven--not too old to have a child--not at all!
+Thirty-seven on the ninth of next month.  He remembered her
+birthday well--he had always observed it religiously, even that
+last birthday so soon before she left him, when he was almost
+certain she was faithless.  Four birthdays in his house.  He had
+looked forward to them, because his gifts had meant a semblance of
+gratitude, a certain attempt at warmth.  Except, indeed, that last
+birthday--which had tempted him to be too religious!  And he shied
+away in thought.  Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds,
+from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.  And then he
+thought suddenly: 'I could send her a present for her birthday.
+After all, we're Christians!  Couldn't!--couldn't we join up
+again!'  And he uttered a deep sigh sitting there.  Annette!  Ah!
+but between him and Annette was the need for that wretched divorce
+suit!  And how?
+
+"A man can always work these things, if he'll take it on himself,"
+Jolyon had said.
+
+But why should he take the scandal on himself with his whole career
+as a pillar of the law at stake?  It was not fair!  It was quix-
+otic!  Twelve years' separation in which he had taken no steps to
+free himself put out of court the possibility of using her conduct
+with Bosinney as a ground for divorcing her.  By doing nothing to
+secure relief he had acquiesced, even if the evidence could now be
+gathered, which was more than doubtful.  Besides, his own pride
+would never let him use that old incident, he had suffered from it
+too much.  No!  Nothing but fresh misconduct on her part--but she
+had denied it; and--almost--he had believed her.  Hung up!  Utterly
+hung up!
+
+He rose from the scooped-out red velvet seat with a feeling of
+constriction about his vitals.  He would never sleep with this
+going on in him!  And, taking coat and hat again, he went out,
+moving eastward.  In Trafalgar Square he became aware of some
+special commotion travelling towards him out of the mouth of the
+Strand.  It materialised in newspaper men calling out so loudly
+that no words whatever could be heard.  He stopped to listen, and
+one came by.
+
+"Payper!  Special!  Ultimatium by Krooger!  Declaration of war!"
+Soames bought the paper.  There it was in the stop press....!  His
+first thought was: 'The Boers are committing suicide.'  His second:
+'Is there anything still I ought to sell?' If so he had missed the
+chance--there would certainly be a slump in the city to-morrow.  He
+swallowed this thought with a nod of defiance.  That ultimatum was
+insolent--sooner than let it pass he was prepared to lose money.
+They wanted a lesson, and they would get it; but it would take
+three months at least to bring them to heel.  There weren't the
+troops out there; always behind time, the Government!  Confound
+those newspaper rats!  What was the use of waking everybody up?
+Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough.  And he thought with
+alarm of his father.  They would cry it down Park Lane.  Hailing a
+hansom, he got in and told the man to drive there.
+
+James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating
+the news to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow.  He paused by
+after-thought to say:
+
+"What do you think of it, Warmson?"
+
+The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames had
+taken off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in a low
+voice: "Well, sir, they 'aven't a chance, of course; but I'm told
+they're very good shots.  I've got a son in the Inniskillings."
+
+"You, Warmson?  Why, I didn't know you were married."
+
+"No, sir.  I don't talk of it.  I expect he'll be going out."
+
+The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so
+little of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the
+slight shock of discovering that the war might touch one
+personally.  Born in the year of the Crimean War, he had only come
+to consciousness by the time the Indian Mutiny was over; since then
+the many little wars of the British Empire had been entirely
+professional, quite unconnected with the Forsytes and all they
+stood for in the body politic.  This war would surely be no
+exception.  But his mind ran hastily over his family.  Two of the
+Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other--it had
+always been a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction
+about the Yeomanry; they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform with
+silver about it, and rode horses.  And Archibald, he remembered,
+had once on a time joined the Militia, but had given it up because
+his father, Nicholas, had made such a fuss about his 'wasting his
+time peacocking about in a uniform.'  Recently he had heard
+somewhere that young Nicholas' eldest, very young Nicholas, had
+become a Volunteer.  'No,' thought Soames, mounting the stairs
+slowly, 'there's nothing in that!'
+
+He stood on the landing outside his parents' bed and dressing
+rooms, debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a
+reassuring word.  Opening the landing window, he listened.  The
+rumble from Piccadilly was all the sound he heard, and with the
+thought, 'If these motor-cars increase, it'll affect house
+property,' he was about to pass on up to the room always kept ready
+for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse rushing call of a
+newsvendor.  There it was, and coming past the house!  He knocked
+on his mother's door and went in.
+
+His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the
+white hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut.  He looked pink,
+and extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and
+pillow, out of which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned
+shoulders emerged in small peaks.  His eyes alone, grey and
+distrustful under their withered lids, were moving from the window
+to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking up and down, squeezing a
+rubber ball attached to a scent bottle.  The room reeked faintly of
+the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.
+
+"All right!" said Soames, "it's not a fire.  The Boers have
+declared war--that's all."
+
+Emily stopped her spraying.
+
+"Oh!" was all she said, and looked at James.
+
+Soames, too, looked at his father.  He was taking it differently
+from their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were
+working in him.
+
+"H'm!" he muttered suddenly, "I shan't live to see the end of
+this."
+
+"Nonsense, James!  It'll be over by Christmas."
+
+"What do you know about it?" James answered her with asperity.
+"It's a pretty mess at this time of night, too!"  He lapsed into
+silence, and his wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him to
+say: 'I can't tell--I don't know; I knew how it would be!'  But he
+did not.  The grey eyes shifted, evidently seeing nothing in the
+room; then movement occurred under the bedclothes, and the knees
+were drawn up suddenly to a great height.
+
+"They ought to send out Roberts.  It all comes from that fellow
+Gladstone and his Majuba."
+
+The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
+something of real anxiety.  It was as if he had said: 'I shall
+never see the old country peaceful and safe again.  I shall have to
+die before I know she's won.'  And in spite of the feeling that
+James must not be encouraged to be fussy, they were touched.
+Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father's hand which
+had emerged from under the bedclothes, long and wrinkled with
+veins.
+
+"Mark my words!" said James, "consols will go to par.  For all I
+know, Val may go and enlist."
+
+"Oh, come, James!" cried Emily, "you talk as if there were danger."
+
+Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.
+
+"Well," he muttered, "I told you how it would be.  I don't know,
+I'm sure--nobody tells me anything.  Are you sleeping here, my boy?"
+
+The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal
+degree of anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping in
+the house, Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.
+
+The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy's had
+known for many a year.  On national occasions, such as this, it
+was, indeed, almost impossible to avoid going there.  Not that
+there was any danger or rather only just enough to make it
+necessary to assure each other that there was none.
+
+Nicholas was there early.  He had seen Soames the night before--
+Soames had said it was bound to come.  This old Kruger was in his
+dotage--why, he must be seventy-five if he was a day!
+
+(Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said?  He had had a fit
+after Majuba.  These Boers were a grasping lot!  The dark-haired
+Francie, who had arrived on his heels, with the contradictious
+touch which became the free spirit of a daughter of Roger, chimed
+in:
+
+"Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas.  What price the Uitlanders?" What
+price, indeed!  A new expression, and believed to be due to her
+brother George.
+
+Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing.  Dear
+Mrs. MacAnder's boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could
+call him grasping.  At this Francie uttered one of her mots,
+scandalising, and so frequently repeated:
+
+"Well, his father's a Scotchman, and his mother's a cat."
+
+Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as
+for Nicholas, he pouted--witticism of which he was not the author
+was hardly to his taste.  Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived,
+followed almost immediately by young Nicholas.  On seeing his son,
+Nicholas rose.
+
+"Well, I must be going," he said, "Nick here will tell you what'll
+win the race."  And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a pillar
+of accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was no more
+addicted to sport than his father had ever been, he departed.  Dear
+Nicholas!  What race was that?  Or was it only one of his jokes?
+He was a wonderful man for his age!  How many lumps would dear
+Marian take?  And how were Giles and Jesse?  Aunt Juley supposed
+their Yeomanry would be very busy now, guarding the coast, though
+of course the Boers had no ships.  But one never knew what the
+French might do if they had the chance, especially since that
+dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so terribly that he
+had made no investments for months afterwards.  It was the
+ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after everything had
+been done for them--Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he was so nice,
+Mrs. MacAnder had always said.  And Sir Alfred Milner sent out to
+talk to them--such a clever man!  She didn't know what they wanted.
+
+But at this moment occurred one of those sensations--so precious at
+Timothy's--which great occasions sometimes bring forth:
+
+"Miss June Forsyte."
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
+smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at
+the return of a prodigal June!  Well, this was a surprise!  Dear
+June--after all these years!  And how well she was looking!  Not
+changed at all!  It was almost on their lips to add, 'And how is
+your dear grandfather?' forgetting in that giddy moment that poor
+dear Jolyon had been in his grave for seven years now.
+
+Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June,
+with her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like
+flame, sat down, slight and short, on a gilt chair with a bead-
+worked seat, for all the world as if ten years had not elapsed
+since she had been to see them--ten years of travel and
+independence and devotion to lame ducks.  Those ducks of late had
+been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that her
+impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic
+outlook had become intense.  Indeed, she had almost ceased to
+believe that her family existed, and looked round her now with a
+sort of challenging directness which brought exquisite discomfort
+to the roomful.  She had not expected to meet any of them but 'the
+poor old things'; and why she had come to see them she hardly knew,
+except that, while on her way from Oxford Street to a studio in
+Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered them with compunction as
+two long-neglected old lame ducks.
+
+Aunt Juley broke the hush again.  "We've just been saying, dear,
+how dreadful it is about these Boers!  And what an impudent thing
+of that old Kruger!"
+
+"Impudent!" said June.  "I think he's quite right.  What business
+have we to meddle with them?  If he turned out all those wretched
+Uitlanders it would serve them right.  They're only after money."
+
+The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:
+
+"What?  Are you a pro-Boer?" (undoubtedly the first use of that
+expression).
+
+"Well!  Why can't we leave them alone?" said June, just as, in the
+open doorway, the maid said "Mr. Soames Forsyte."  Sensation on
+sensation!  Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how
+June and he would take this encounter, for it was shrewdly
+suspected, if not quite known, that they had not met since that old
+and lamentable affair of her fiance Bosinney with Soames' wife.
+They were seen to just touch each other's hands, and look each at
+the other's left eye only.  Aunt Juley came at once to the rescue:
+
+"Dear June is so original.  Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers are
+not to blame."
+
+"They only want their independence," said June; "and why shouldn't
+they have it?"
+
+"Because," answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side,
+"they happen to have agreed to our suzerainty."
+
+"Suzerainty!" repeated June scornfully; "we shouldn't like anyone's
+suzerainty over us."
+
+"They got advantages in payment," replied Soames; "a contract is a
+contract."
+
+"Contracts are not always just," fumed out June, "and when they're
+not, they ought to be broken.  The Boers are much the weaker.  We
+could afford to be generous."
+
+Soames sniffed.  "That's mere sentiment," he said.
+
+Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
+disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:
+
+"What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?"
+
+But June was not to be diverted.
+
+"I don't know why sentiment should be sneered at.  It's the best
+thing in the world."  She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley
+had to intervene again:
+
+"Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?"
+
+Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed her.
+Soames flushed.  To disclose the name of his latest purchases would
+be like walking into the jaws of disdain.  For somehow they all
+knew of June's predilection for 'genius' not yet on its legs, and
+her contempt for 'success' unless she had had a finger in securing
+it.
+
+"One or two," he muttered.
+
+But June's face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing its
+chance.  Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of Eric
+Cobbley--her last lame duck?  And she promptly opened her attack:
+Did Soames know his work?  It was so wonderful.  He was the coming
+man.
+
+Oh, yes, Soames knew his work.  It was in his view 'splashy,' and
+would never get hold of the public.
+
+June blazed up.
+
+"Of course it won't; that's the last thing one would wish for.  I
+thought you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer."
+
+"Of course Soames is a connoisseur," Aunt Juley said hastily; "he
+has wonderful taste--he can always tell beforehand what's going to
+be successful."
+
+"Oh!" gasped June, and sprang up from the bead-covered chair, "I
+hate that standard of success.  Why can't people buy things because
+they like them?"
+
+"You mean," said Francie, "because you like them."
+
+And in the slight pause young Nicholas was heard saying gently that
+Violet (his fourth) was taking lessons in pastel, he didn't know if
+they were any use.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Auntie," said June; "I must get on," and kissing
+her aunts, she looked defiantly round the room, said "Good-bye"
+again, and went.  A breeze seemed to pass out with her, as if
+everyone had sighed.
+
+The third sensation came before anyone had time to speak:
+
+"Mr. James Forsyte."
+
+James came in using a stick slightly and wrapped in a fur coat
+which gave him a fictitious bulk.
+
+Everyone stood up.  James was so old; and he had not been at
+Timothy's for nearly two years.
+
+"It's hot in here," he said.
+
+Soames divested him of his coat, and as he did so could not help
+admiring the glossy way his father was turned out.  James sat down,
+all knees, elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.
+
+"What's the meaning of that?" he said.
+
+Though there was no apparent sense in his words, they all knew that
+he was referring to June.  His eyes searched his son's face.
+
+"I thought I'd come and see for myself.  What have they answered
+Kruger?"
+
+Soames took out an evening paper, and read the headline.
+
+"'Instant action by our Government--state of war existing!'"
+
+"Ah!" said James, and sighed.  "I was afraid they'd cut and run
+like old Gladstone.  We shall finish with them this time."
+
+All stared at him.  James!  Always fussy, nervous, anxious!  James
+with his continual, 'I told you how it would be!' and his pessimism,
+and his cautious investments.  There was something uncanny about
+such resolution in this the oldest living Forsyte.
+
+"Where's Timothy?" said James.  "He ought to pay attention to
+this."
+
+Aunt Juley said she didn't know; Timothy had not said much at lunch
+to-day.  Aunt Hester rose and threaded her way out of the room, and
+Francie said rather maliciously:
+
+"The Boers are a hard nut to crack, Uncle James."
+
+"H'm!" muttered James.  "Where do you get your information?  Nobody
+tells me."
+
+Young Nicholas remarked in his mild voice that Nick (his eldest)
+was now going to drill regularly.
+
+"Ah!" muttered James, and stared before him--his thoughts were on
+Val.  "He's got to look after his mother," he said, "he's got no
+time for drilling and that, with that father of his."  This cryptic
+saying produced silence, until he spoke again.
+
+"What did June want here?"  And his eyes rested with suspicion on
+all of them in turn.  "Her father's a rich man now."  The
+conversation turned on Jolyon, and when he had been seen last.  It
+was supposed that he went abroad and saw all sorts of people now
+that his wife was dead; his water-colours were on the line, and he
+was a successful man.  Francie went so far as to say:
+
+"I should like to see him again; he was rather a dear."
+
+Aunt Juley recalled how he had gone to sleep on the sofa one day,
+where James was sitting.  He had always been very amiable; what did
+Soames think?
+
+Knowing that Jolyon was Irene's trustee, all felt the delicacy of
+this question, and looked at Soames with interest.  A faint pink
+had come up in his cheeks.
+
+"He's going grey," he said.
+
+Indeed!  Had Soames seen him?  Soames nodded, and the pink
+vanished.
+
+James said suddenly: "Well--I don't know, I can't tell."
+
+It so exactly expressed the sentiment of everybody present that
+there was something behind everything, that nobody responded.  But
+at this moment Aunt Hester returned.
+
+"Timothy," she said in a low voice, "Timothy has bought a map, and
+he's put in--he's put in three flags."
+
+Timothy had ....!  A sigh went round the company.
+
+If Timothy had indeed put in three flags already, well!--it showed
+what the nation could do when it was roused.  The war was as good
+as over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JOLYON FINDS OUT WHERE HE IS
+
+
+Jolyon stood at the window in Holly's old night nursery, converted
+into a studio, not because it had a north light, but for its view
+over the prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom.  He shifted to
+the side window which overlooked the stableyard, and whistled down
+to the dog Balthasar who lay for ever under the clock tower.  The
+old dog looked up and wagged his tail.  'Poor old boy!'  thought
+Jolyon, shifting back to the other window.
+
+He had been restless all this week, since his attempt to prosecute
+trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever acute,
+disturbed in his sense of compassion which was easily excited, and
+with a queer sensation as if his feeling for beauty had received
+some definite embodiment.  Autumn was getting hold of the old
+oak-tree, its leaves were browning.  Sunshine had been plentiful
+and hot this summer.  As with trees, so with men's lives!  'I ought
+to live long,' thought Jolyon; 'I'm getting mildewed for want of
+heat.  If I can't work, I shall be off to Paris.'  But memory of
+Paris gave him no pleasure.  Besides, how could he go?  He must
+stay and see what Soames was going to do.  'I'm her trustee.  I
+can't leave her unprotected,' he thought.  It had been striking him
+as curious how very clearly he could still see Irene in her little
+drawing-room which he had only twice entered.  Her beauty must have
+a sort of poignant harmony!  No literal portrait would ever do her
+justice; the essence of her was--ah I what?...  The noise of hoofs
+called him back to the other window.  Holly was riding into the
+yard on her long-tailed 'palfrey.'  She looked up and he waved to
+her.  She had been rather silent lately; getting old, he supposed,
+beginning to want her future, as they all did--youngsters!
+
+Time was certainly the devil!  And with the feeling that to waste
+this swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took up
+his brush.  But it was no use; he could not concentrate his eye--
+besides, the light was going.  'I'll go up to town,' he thought.
+In the hall a servant met him.
+
+"A lady to see you, sir; Mrs. Heron."
+
+Extraordinary coincidence!  Passing into the picture-gallery, as it
+was still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window.
+
+She came towards him saying:
+
+"I've been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden.
+I always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon."
+
+"You couldn't trespass here," replied Jolyon; "history makes that
+impossible.  I was just thinking of you."
+
+Irene smiled.  And it was as if something shone through; not mere
+spirituality--serener, completer, more alluring.
+
+"History!" she answered; "I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was
+for ever.  Well, it isn't.  Only aversion lasts."
+
+Jolyon stared at her.  Had she got over Bosinney at last?
+
+"Yes!" he said, "aversion's deeper than love or hate because it's a
+natural product of the nerves, and we don't change them."
+
+"I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me.  He said a
+thing that frightened me.  He said: 'You are still my wife!'"
+
+"What!" ejaculated Jolyon.  "You ought not to live alone."  And he
+continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where
+Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was
+why so many people looked on it as immoral.
+
+"What more?"
+
+"He asked me to shake hands.
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes.  When he came in I'm sure he didn't want to; he changed while
+he was there."
+
+"Ah! you certainly ought not to go on living there alone."
+
+"I know no woman I could ask; and I can't take a lover to order,
+Cousin Jolyon."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Jolyon.  "What a damnable position!  Will you
+stay to dinner?  No?  Well, let me see you back to town; I wanted
+to go up this evening."
+
+"Truly?"
+
+"Truly.  I'll be ready in five minutes."
+
+On that walk to the station they talked of pictures and music,
+contrasting the English and French characters and the difference in
+their attitude to Art.  But to Jolyon the colours in the hedges of
+the long straight lane, the twittering of chaffinches who kept pace
+with them, the perfume of weeds being already burned, the turn of
+her neck, the fascination of those dark eyes bent on him now and
+then, the lure of her whole figure, made a deeper impression than
+the remarks they exchanged.  Unconsciously he held himself
+straighter, walked with a more elastic step.
+
+In the train he put her through a sort of catechism as to what she
+did with her days.
+
+Made her dresses, shopped, visited a hospital, played her piano,
+translated from the French.
+
+She had regular work from a publisher, it seemed, which
+supplemented her income a little.  She seldom went out in the
+evening.  "I've been living alone so long, you see, that I don't
+mind it a bit.  I believe I'm naturally solitary."
+
+"I don't believe that," said Jolyon.  "Do you know many people?"
+
+"Very few."
+
+At Waterloo they took a hansom, and he drove with her to the door
+of her mansions.  Squeezing her hand at parting, he said:
+
+"You know, you could always come to us at Robin Hill; you must let
+me know everything that happens.  Good-bye, Irene."
+
+"Good-bye," she answered softly.
+
+Jolyon climbed back into his cab, wondering why he had not asked
+her to dine and go to the theatre with him.  Solitary, starved,
+hung-up life that she had!  "Hotch Potch Club," he said through the
+trap-door.  As his hansom debouched on to the Embankment, a man in
+top-hat and overcoat passed, walking quickly, so close to the wall
+that he seemed to be scraping it.
+
+'By Jove!' thought Jolyon; 'Soames himself!  What's he up to now?'
+And, stopping the cab round the corner, he got out and retraced his
+steps to where he could see the entrance to the mansions.  Soames
+had halted in front of them, and was looking up at the light in her
+windows.  'If he goes in,' thought Jolyon, 'what shall I do?  What
+have I the right to do?'  What the fellow had said was true.  She
+was still his wife, absolutely without protection from annoyance!
+'Well, if he goes in,' he thought, 'I follow.'  And he began moving
+towards the mansions.  Again Soames advanced; he was in the very
+entrance now.  But suddenly he stopped, spun round on his heel, and
+came back towards the river.  'What now?' thought Jolyon.  'In a
+dozen steps he'll recognise me.'  And he turned tail.  His cousin's
+footsteps kept pace with his own.  But he reached his cab, and got
+in before Soames had turned the corner.  "Go on!" he said through
+the trap.  Soames' figure ranged up alongside.
+
+"Hansom!" he said.  "Engaged?  Hallo!"
+
+"Hallo!" answered Jolyon.  "You?"
+
+The quick suspicion on his cousin's face, white in the lamplight,
+decided him.
+
+"I can give you a lift," he said, "if you're going West."
+
+"Thanks," answered Soames, and got in.
+
+"I've been seeing Irene," said Jolyon when the cab had started.
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"You went to see her yesterday yourself, I understand."
+
+
+"I did," said Soames; "she's my wife, you know."
+
+The tone, the half-lifted sneering lip, roused sudden anger in
+Jolyon; but he subdued it.
+
+"You ought to know best," he said, "but if you want a divorce it's
+not very wise to go seeing her, is it?  One can't run with the hare
+and hunt with the hounds?"
+
+"You're very good to warn me," said Soames, "but I have not made up
+my mind."
+
+"She has," said Jolyon, looking straight before him; "you can't
+take things up, you know, as they were twelve years ago."
+
+"That remains to be seen."
+
+"Look here!" said Jolyon, "she's in a damnable position, and I am
+the only person with any legal say in her affairs."
+
+"Except myself," retorted Soames, "who am also in a damnable
+position.  Hers is what she made for herself; mine what she made
+for me.  I am not at all sure that in her own interests I shan't
+require her to return to me."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole body.
+
+"I don't know what you may mean by 'what,'" answered Soames coldly;
+"your say in her affairs is confined to paying out her income;
+please bear that in mind.  In choosing not to disgrace her by a
+divorce, I retained my rights, and, as I say, I am not at all sure
+that I shan't require to exercise them."
+
+"My God!" ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.
+
+"Yes," said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice.
+"I've not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, 'The man of
+property'!  I'm not called names for nothing."
+
+"This is fantastic," murmured Jolyon.  Well, the fellow couldn't
+force his wife to live with him.  Those days were past, anyway!
+And he looked around at Soames with the thought: 'Is he real, this
+man?' But Soames looked very real, sitting square yet almost
+elegant with the clipped moustache on his pale face, and a tooth
+showing where a lip was lifted in a fixed smile.  There was a long
+silence, while Jolyon thought: 'Instead of helping her, I've made
+things worse.'  Suddenly Soames said:
+
+"It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many ways."
+
+At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that he
+could barely sit still in the cab.  It was as if he were boxed up
+with hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with that
+something in the national character which had always been to him
+revolting, something which he knew to be extremely natural and yet
+which seemed to him inexplicable--their intense belief in contracts
+and vested rights, their complacent sense of virtue in the exaction
+of those rights.  Here beside him in the cab was the very
+embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of the possessive
+instinct--his own kinsman, too!  It was uncanny and intolerable!
+'But there's something more in it than that!' he thought with a
+sick feeling.  'The dog, they say, returns to his vomit!  The sight
+of her has reawakened something.  Beauty!  The devil's in it!'
+
+"As I say," said Soames, "I have not made up my mind.  I shall be
+obliged if you will kindly leave her quite alone."
+
+Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed
+the thought of one now.
+
+"I can give you no such promise," he said shortly.
+
+"Very well," said Soames, "then we know where we are.  I'll get
+down here."  And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign
+of farewell.  Jolyon travelled on to his Club.
+
+The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he
+paid no attention.  What could he do to help her?  If only his
+father were alive!  He could have done so much!  But why could he
+not do all that his father could have done?  Was he not old
+enough?--turned fifty and twice married, with grown-up daughters
+and a son.  'Queer,' he thought.  'If she were plain I shouldn't be
+thinking twice about it.  Beauty is the devil, when you're sen-
+sitive to it!'  And into the Club reading-room he went with a
+disturbed heart.  In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one
+summer afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and
+secret lecture he had given that young man in the interests of
+June, the diagnosis of the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he had
+wondered what sort of woman it was he was warning him against.  And
+now!  He was almost in want of a warning himself.  'It's deuced
+funny!'  he thought, 'really deuced funny!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOAMES DISCOVERS WHAT HE WANTS
+
+
+It is so much easier to say, "Then we know where we are," than to
+mean anything particular by the words.  And in saying them Soames
+did but vent the jealous rankling of his instincts.  He got out of
+the cab in a state of wary anger--with himself for not having seen
+Irene, with Jolyon for having seen her; and now with his inability
+to tell exactly what he wanted.
+
+He had abandoned the cab because he could not bear to remain seated
+beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he thought: 'I
+wouldn't trust that fellow Jolyon a yard.  Once outcast, always
+outcast!'  The chap had a natural sympathy with--with--laxity (he
+had shied at the word sin, because it was too melodramatic for use
+by a Forsyte).
+
+Indecision in desire was to him a new feeling.  He was like a child
+between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken away
+from him; and he was astonished at himself.  Only last Sunday
+desire had seemed simple--just his freedom and Annette.  'I'll go
+and dine there,' he thought.  To see her might bring back his
+singleness of intention, calm his exasperation, clear his mind.
+
+The restaurant was fairly full--a good many foreigners and folk
+whom, from their appearance, he took to be literary or artistic.
+Scraps of conversation came his way through the clatter of plates
+and glasses.  He distinctly heard the Boers sympathised with, the
+British Government blamed.  'Don't think much of their clientele,'
+he thought.  He went stolidly through his dinner and special coffee
+without making his presence known, and when at last he had
+finished, was careful not to be seen going towards the sanctum of
+Madame Lamotte.  They were, as he entered, having supper--such a
+much nicer-looking supper than the dinner he had eaten that he felt
+a kind of grief--and they greeted him with a surprise so seemingly
+genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: 'I believe they knew
+I was here all the time.'  He gave Annette a look furtive and
+searching.  So pretty, seemingly so candid; could she be angling
+for him?  He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:
+
+"I've been dining here."
+
+Really!  If she had only known!  There were dishes she could have
+recommended; what a pity!  Soames was confirmed in his suspicion.
+'I must look out what I'm doing!' he thought sharply.
+
+"Another little cup of very special coffee, monsieur; a liqueur,
+Grand Marnier?" and Madame Lamotte rose to order these delicacies.
+
+Alone with Annette Soames said, "Well, Annette?" with a defensive
+little smile about his lips.
+
+The girl blushed.  This, which last Sunday would have set his
+nerves tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has when
+a dog that he owns wriggles and looks at him.  He had a curious
+sense of power, as if he could have said to her, 'Come and kiss
+me,' and she would have come.  And yet--it was strange--but there
+seemed another face and form in the room too; and the itch in his
+nerves, was it for that--or for this?  He jerked his head towards
+the restaurant and said: "You have some queer customers.  Do you
+like this life?"
+
+Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with
+her fork.
+
+"No," she said, "I do not like it."
+
+'I've got her,' thought Soames, 'if I want her.  But do I want
+her?' She was graceful, she was pretty--very pretty; she was fresh,
+she had taste of a kind.  His eyes travelled round the little room;
+but the eyes of his mind went another journey--a half-light, and
+silvery walls, a satinwood piano, a woman standing against it,
+reined back as it were from him--a woman with white shoulders that
+he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought to know, and hair like
+dull dark amber.  And as in an artist who strives for the
+unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him at that
+moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.
+
+"Well," he said calmly, "you're young.  There's everything before
+you."
+
+Annette shook her head.
+
+"I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work.  I am
+not so in love with work as mother."
+
+"Your mother is a wonder," said Soames, faintly mocking; "she will
+never let failure lodge in her house."
+
+Annette sighed.  "It must be wonderful to be rich."
+
+"Oh!  You'll be rich some day," answered Soames, still with that
+faint mockery; "don't be afraid."
+
+Annette shrugged her shoulders.  "Monsieur is very kind."  And
+between her pouting lips she put a chocolate.
+
+'Yes, my dear,' thought Soames, 'they're very pretty.'
+
+Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that
+colloquy.  Soames did not stay long.
+
+Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a
+feeling of property improperly owned, he mused.  If only Irene had
+given him a son, he wouldn't now be squirming after women!  The
+thought had jumped out of its little dark sentry-box in his inner
+consciousness.  A son--something to look forward to, something to
+make the rest of life worth while, something to leave himself to,
+some perpetuity of self.  'If I had a son,' he thought bitterly,
+'a proper legal son, I could make shift to go on as I used.  One
+woman's much the same as another, after all.'  But as he walked he
+shook his head.  No!  One woman was not the same as another.  Many
+a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted
+married life; and he had always failed.  He was failing now.  He
+was trying to think Annette the same as that other.  But she was
+not, she had not the lure of that old passion.  'And Irene's my
+wife,' he thought, 'my legal wife.  I have done nothing to put her
+away from me.  Why shouldn't she come back to me?  It's the right
+thing, the lawful thing.  It makes no scandal, no disturbance.  If
+it's disagreeable to her--but why should it be?  I'm not a leper,
+and she--she's no longer in love!'  Why should he be put to the
+shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of the
+Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting
+to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her?
+To one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet
+possession of his own property with nothing given away to the world
+was intensely alluring.  'No,' he mused, 'I'm glad I went to see
+that girl.  I know now what I want most.  If only Irene will come
+back I'll be as considerate as she wishes; she could live her own
+life; but perhaps--perhaps she would come round to me.'  There was
+a lump in his throat.  And doggedly along by the railings of the
+Green Park, towards his father's house, he went, trying to tread on
+his shadow walking before him in the brilliant moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE THIRD GENERATION
+
+
+Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November
+afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up.  Jolly had just changed out
+of boating flannels and was on his way to the 'Frying-pan,' to
+which he had recently been elected.  Val had just changed out of
+riding clothes and was on his way to the fire--a bookmaker's in
+Cornmarket.
+
+"Hallo!" said Jolly.
+
+"Hallo!" replied Val.
+
+The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having
+invited the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen
+each other again under somewhat exotic circumstances.
+
+Over a tailor's in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged
+young beings called minors, whose inheritances are large, whose
+parents are dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts
+are vicious.  At nineteen he had commenced one of those careers
+attractive and inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single
+bankruptcy is good as a feast.  Already famous for having the only
+roulette table then to be found in Oxford, he was anticipating his
+expectations at a dazzling rate.  He out-crummed Crum, though of a
+sanguine and rather beefy type which lacked the latter's
+fascinating languor.  For Val it had been in the nature of baptism
+to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of confirmation
+to get back into college, after hours, through a window whose bars
+were deceptive.  Once, during that evening of delight, glancing up
+from the seductive green before him, he had caught sight, through a
+cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite.  'Rouge gagne,
+impair, et manque!'  He had not seen him again.
+
+"Come in to the Frying-pan and have tea," said Jolly, and they went
+in.
+
+A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an unseizable
+resemblance between these second cousins of the third generations
+of Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though Jolly's eyes
+were darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy.
+
+"Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please," said Jolly.
+
+"Have one of my cigarettes?" said Val.  "I saw you last night.  How
+did you do?"
+
+"I didn't play."
+
+"I won fifteen quid."
+
+Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had
+once heard his father make--'When you're fleeced you're sick, and
+when you fleece you're sorry--Jolly contented himself with:
+
+"Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap.  He's an
+awful fool."
+
+"Oh! I don't know," said Val, as one might speak in defence of a
+disparaged god; "he's a pretty good sport."
+
+They exchanged whiffs in silence.
+
+"You met my people, didn't you?" said Jolly.  "They're coming up
+to-morrow."
+
+Val grew a little red.
+
+"Really!  I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester
+November handicap."
+
+"Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races."
+
+"You can't make any money over them," said Val.
+
+"I hate the ring," said Jolly; "there's such a row and stink.  I
+like the paddock."
+
+"I like to back my judgment,"' answered Val.
+
+Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father's.
+
+"I haven't got any.  I always lose money if I bet."
+
+"You have to buy experience, of course."
+
+"Yes, but it's all messed-up with doing people in the eye."
+
+"Of course, or they'll do you--that's the excitement."
+
+Jolly looked a little scornful.
+
+"What do you do with yourself?  Row?"
+
+"No--ride, and drive about.  I'm going to play polo next term, if I
+can get my granddad to stump up."
+
+"That's old Uncle James, isn't it?  What's he like?"
+
+"Older than forty hills," said Val, "and always thinking he's going
+to be ruined."
+
+"I suppose my granddad and he were brothers."
+
+"I don't believe any of that old lot were sportsmen," said Val;
+"they must have worshipped money."
+
+"Mine didn't!" said Jolly warmly.
+
+Val flipped the ash off his cigarette.
+
+"Money's only fit to spend," he said; "I wish the deuce I had
+more."
+
+Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had
+inherited from old Jolyon: One didn't talk about money!  And again
+there was silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered buns.
+
+"Where are your people going to stay?" asked Val, elaborately
+casual.
+
+"'Rainbow.'  What do you think of the war?"
+
+"Rotten, so far.  The Boers aren't sports a bit.  Why don't they
+come out into the open?"
+
+"Why should they?  They've got everything against them except their
+way of fighting.  I rather admire them."
+
+"They can ride and shoot," admitted Val, "but they're a lousy lot.
+Do you know Crum?"
+
+"Of Merton?  Only by sight.  He's in that fast set too, isn't he?
+Rather La-di-da and Brummagem."
+
+Val said fixedly: "He's a friend of mine."
+
+"Oh! Sorry!"  And they sat awkwardly staring past each other,
+having pitched on their pet points of snobbery.  For Jolly was
+forming himself unconsciously on a set whose motto was:
+
+'We defy you to bore us.  Life isn't half long enough, and we're
+going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and
+dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine.  We are
+"the best"--made of wire and whipcord.'  And Val was unconsciously
+forming himself on a set whose motto was: 'We defy you to interest
+or excite us.  We have had every sensation, or if we haven't, we
+pretend we have.  We are so exhausted with living that no hours are
+too small for us.  We will lose our shirts with equanimity.  We
+have flown fast and are past everything.  All is cigarette smoke.
+Bismillah!'  Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the English, was
+obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the close
+of a century ideals are mixed.  The aristocracy had already in the
+main adopted the 'jumping-Jesus' principle; though here and there
+one like Crum--who was an 'honourable'--stood starkly languid for
+that gambler's Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old
+'dandies' and of 'the mashers' in the eighties.  And round Crum
+were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a
+plutocratic following.
+
+But there was between the cousins another far less obvious
+antipathy--coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which
+each perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old
+feud persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed
+within them by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders.
+And Jolly, tinkling his teaspoon, was musing: 'His tie-pin and his
+waistcoat and his drawl and his betting--good Lord!'
+
+And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: 'He's rather a young
+beast!'
+
+"I suppose you'll be meeting your people?" he said, getting up.
+"I wish you'd tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.--not
+that there's anything much there--if they'd care to come."
+
+"Thanks, I'll ask them."
+
+"Would they lunch?  I've got rather a decent scout."
+
+Jolly doubted if they would have time.
+
+"You'll ask them, though?"
+
+"Very good of you," said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not
+go; but, instinctively polite, he added: "You'd better come and
+have dinner with us to-morrow."
+
+"Rather.  What time?"
+
+"Seven-thirty."
+
+"Dress?"
+
+"No."  And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.
+
+Holly and her father arrived by a midday train.  It was her first
+visit to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent,
+looking almost shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful
+place.  After lunch she wandered, examining his household gods with
+intense curiosity.  Jolly's sitting-room was panelled, and Art
+represented by a set of Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old
+Jolyon, and by college photographs--of young men, live young men, a
+little heroic, and to be compared with her memories of Val.  Jolyon
+also scrutinised with care that evidence of his boy's character and
+tastes.
+
+Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set
+forth to the river.  Holly, between her brother and her father,
+felt elated when heads were turned and eyes rested on her.  That
+they might see him to the best advantage they left him at the Barge
+and crossed the river to the towing-path.  Slight in build--for of
+all the Forsytes only old Swithin and George were beefy--Jolly was
+rowing 'Two' in a trial eight.  He looked very earnest and
+strenuous.  With pride Jolyon thought him the best-looking boy of
+the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck by one or two
+of the others, but would not have said so for the world.  The river
+was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still
+beautiful with colour.  Distinguished peace clung around the old
+city; Jolyon promised himself a day's sketching if the weather
+held.  The Eight passed a second time, spurting home along the
+Barges--Jolly's face was very set, so as not to show that he was
+blown.  They returned across the river and waited for him.
+
+"Oh!" said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, "I had to ask that
+chap Val Dartie to dine with us to-night.  He wanted to give you
+lunch and show you B.N.C., so I thought I'd better; then you
+needn't go.  I don't like him much."
+
+Holly's rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh! I don't know.  He seems to me rather showy and bad form.  What
+are his people like, Dad?  He's only a second cousin, isn't he?"
+
+Jolyon took refuge in a smile.
+
+"Ask Holly," he said; "she saw his uncle."
+
+"I liked Val," Holly answered, staring at the ground before her;
+"his uncle looked--awfully different."  She stole a glance at Jolly
+from under her lashes.
+
+"Did you ever," said Jolyon with whimsical intention, "hear our
+family history, my dears?  It's quite a fairy tale.  The first
+Jolyon Forsyte--at all events the first we know anything of, and
+that would be your great-great-grandfather--dwelt in the land of
+Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an
+'agriculturalist,' as your great-aunt put it, and the son of an
+agriculturist--farmers, in fact; your grandfather used to call
+them, 'Very small beer.'"  He looked at Jolly to see how his
+lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly's
+malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother's face.
+
+"We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it
+was before the Industrial Era began.  The second Jolyon Forsyte--
+your great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset
+Forsyte--built houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children,
+and migrated to London town.  It is known that he drank sherry.  We
+may suppose him representing the England of Napoleon's wars, and
+general unrest.  The eldest of his six sons was the third Jolyon,
+your grandfather, my dears--tea merchant and chairman of companies,
+one of the soundest Englishmen who ever lived--and to me the
+dearest."  Jolyon's voice had lost its irony, and his son and
+daughter gazed at him solemnly, "He was just and tenacious, tender
+and young at heart.  You remember him, and I remember him.  Pass to
+the others!  Your great-uncle James, that's young Val's grand-
+father, had a son called Soames--whereby hangs a tale of no love
+lost, and I don't think I'll tell it you.  James and the other
+eight children of 'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five
+alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its
+principles of trade and individualism at five per cent. and your
+money back--if you know what that means.  At all events they've
+turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in
+the course of their long lives.  They never did a wild thing--
+unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe was once
+swindled at thimble-rig, and was called 'Four-in-hand Forsyte'
+because he drove a pair.  Their day is passing, and their type, not
+altogether for the advantage of the country.  They were pedestrian,
+but they too were sound.  I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte--a poor
+holder of the name--"
+
+"No, Dad," said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand.
+
+"Yes," repeated Jolyon, "a poor specimen, representing, I'm afraid,
+nothing but the end of the century, unearned income, amateurism,
+and individual liberty--a different thing from individualism,
+Jolly.  You are the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man, and you open the
+ball of the new century."
+
+As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly
+said: "It's fascinating, Dad."
+
+None of them quite knew what she meant.  Jolly was grave.
+
+The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for
+lack of modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-
+room, in which Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone,
+when the only guest arrived.  Rather as one would touch a moth, Val
+took her hand.  And wouldn't she wear this 'measly flower'?  It
+would look ripping in her hair.  He removed a gardenia from his
+coat.
+
+"Oh!  No, thank you--I couldn't!"  But she took it and pinned it at
+her neck, having suddenly remembered that word 'showy'!  Val's
+buttonhole would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like
+him.  Did she realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her
+presence, and was that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction
+for her?
+
+"I never said anything about our ride, Val."
+
+"Rather not!  It's just between us."
+
+By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was
+giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too--the
+wish to make him happy.
+
+"Do tell me about Oxford.  It must be ever so lovely."
+
+Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked;
+the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps.
+"Only," he added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could come
+down and see you."
+
+Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.
+
+"You haven't forgotten," he said, suddenly gathering courage, "that
+we're going mad-rabbiting together?"
+
+Holly smiled.
+
+"Oh!  That was only make-believe.  One can't do that sort of thing
+after one's grown up, you know."
+
+"Dash it! cousins can," said Val.  "Next Long Vac.--it begins in
+June, you know, and goes on for ever--we'll watch our chance."
+
+But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly
+shook her head.  "It won't come off," she murmured.
+
+"Won't it!" said Val fervently; "who's going to stop it?  Not your
+father or your brother."
+
+At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into
+Val's patent leather and Holly's white satin toes, where it itched
+and tingled during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness.
+
+Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism
+between the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became un-
+consciously ironical, which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth.
+A letter, handed to him after dinner, reduced him to a silence
+hardly broken till Jolly and Val rose to go.  He went out with
+them, smoking his cigar, and walked with his son to the gates of
+Christ Church.  Turning back, he took out the letter and read it
+again beneath a lamp.
+
+
+"DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"Soames came again to-night--my thirty-seventh birthday.  You were
+right, I mustn't stay here.  I'm going to-morrow to the Piedmont
+Hotel, but I won't go abroad without seeing you.  I feel lonely and
+down-hearted.
+
+"Yours affectionately,
+
+"IRENE."
+
+
+He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished
+at the violence of his feelings.  What had the fellow said or done?
+
+He turned into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of
+spires and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or
+darkshadowed in the strong moonlight.  In this very heart of
+England's gentility it was difficult to realise that a lonely woman
+could be importuned or hunted, but what else could her letter mean?
+Soames must have been pressing her to go back to him again, with
+public opinion and the Law on his side, too!  'Eighteen-ninety-
+nine!,' he thought, gazing at the broken glass shining on the top
+of a villa garden wall; 'but when it comes to property we're still
+a heathen people!  I'll go up to-morrow morning.  I dare say it'll
+be best for her to go abroad.'  Yet the thought displeased him.
+Why should Soames hunt her out of England!  Besides, he might
+follow, and out there she would be still more helpless against the
+attentions of her own husband!  'I must tread warily,' he thought;
+'that fellow could make himself very nasty.  I didn't like his
+manner in the cab the other night.'  His thoughts turned to his
+daughter June.  Could she help?  Once on a time Irene had been her
+greatest friend, and now she was a 'lame duck,' such as must appeal
+to June's nature!  He determined to wire to his daughter to meet
+him at Paddington Station.  Retracing his steps towards the Rainbow
+he questioned his own sensations.  Would he be upsetting himself
+over every woman in like case?  No! he would not.  The candour of
+this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had gone
+up to bed, he sought his own room.  But he could not sleep, and sat
+for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the
+moonlight on the roofs.
+
+Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and
+below Val's eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to
+make Jolly like him better.  The scent of the gardenia was strong
+in her little bedroom, and pleasant to her.
+
+And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was
+gazing at a moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing
+instead Holly, slim and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire
+when he first went in.
+
+But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand
+beneath his cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a
+race against him, while his father was calling from the towpath:
+'Two!  Get your hands away there, bless you!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SOAMES PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH
+
+
+Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the
+West End of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames
+the most 'attractive' word just coming into fashion.  He had never
+had his Uncle Swithin's taste in precious stones, and the
+abandonment by Irene when she left his house in 1887 of all the
+glittering things he had given her had disgusted him with this form
+of investment.  But he still knew a diamond when he saw one, and
+during the week before her birthday he had taken occasion, on his
+way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally a little
+before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one's money's
+worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods.
+
+Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him
+more and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his life,
+the supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong.  And,
+alongside the dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never with
+his self-preservation, now or never if he were to range himself and
+found a family, went the secret urge of his senses roused by the
+sight of her who had once been a passionately desired wife, and the
+conviction that it was a sin against common sense and the decent
+secrecy of Forsytes to waste the wife he had.
+
+In an opinion on Winifred's case, Dreamer, Q.C.--he would much have
+preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late in the
+day as to rouse the usual suspicion of a political job)--had
+advised that they should go forward and obtain restitution of
+conjugal rights, a point which to Soames had never been in doubt.
+When they had obtained a decree to that effect they must wait to
+see if it was obeyed.  If not, it would constitute legal desertion,
+and they should obtain evidence of misconduct and file their
+petition for divorce.  All of which Soames knew perfectly well.
+They had marked him ten and one.  This simplicity in his sister's
+case only made him the more desperate about the difficulty in his
+own.  Everything, in fact, was driving him towards the simple
+solution of Irene's return.  If it were still against the grain
+with her, had he not feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to
+forget?  He at least had never injured her, and this was a world of
+compromise!  He could offer her so much more than she had now.  He
+would be prepared to make a liberal settlement on her which could
+not be upset.  He often scrutinised his image in these days.  He
+had never been a peacock like that fellow Dartie, or fancied
+himself a woman's man, but he had a certain belief in his own
+appearance--not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved,
+neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind.
+The Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his
+eyes, virtues.  So far as he could tell there was no feature of him
+which need inspire dislike.
+
+Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural,
+even if far-fetched in their inception.  If he could only give
+tangible proof enough of his determination to let bygones be
+bygones, and to do all in his power to please her, why should she
+not come back to him?
+
+He entered Gaves and Cortegal's therefore, on the morning of
+November the 9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch.  "Four
+twenty-five and dirt cheap, sir, at the money.  It's a lady's
+brooch."  There was that in his mood which made him accept without
+demur.  And he went on into the Poultry with the flat green morocco
+case in his breast pocket.  Several times that day he opened it to
+look at the seven soft shining stones in their velvet oval nest.
+
+"If the lady doesn't like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time.
+But there's no fear of that."  If only there were not!  He got
+through a vast amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew.
+A cablegram came while he was in the office with details from the
+agent in Buenos Aires, and the name and address of a stewardess who
+would be prepared to swear to what was necessary.  It was a timely
+spur to Soames, with his rooted distaste for the washing of dirty
+linen in public.  And when he set forth by Underground to Victoria
+Station he received a fresh impetus towards the renewal of his
+married life from the account in his evening paper of a fashionable
+divorce suit.  The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety
+and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and
+solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane.  He neither could nor
+would breath a word to his people of his intention--too reticent
+and proud--but the thought that at least they would be glad if they
+knew, and wish him luck, was heartening.
+
+James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of
+Kruger's ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor
+success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in The
+Times.  He didn't know where it would end.  Soames sought to cheer
+him by the continual use of the word Buller.  But James couldn't
+tell!  There was Colley--and he got stuck on that hill, and this
+Ladysmith was down in a hollow, and altogether it looked to him a
+'pretty kettle of fish'; he thought they ought to be sending the
+sailors--they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea.
+Soames shifted the ground of consolation.  Winifred had heard from
+Val that there had been a 'rag' and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at
+Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face.
+
+"Ah!" James muttered, "he's a clever little chap."  But he shook
+his head shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn't know what
+would become of him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on
+that Soames had never had a boy.  He would have liked a grandson of
+his own name.  And now--well, there it was!
+
+Soames flinched.  He had not expected such a challenge to disclose
+the secret in his heart.  And Emily, who saw him wince, said:
+
+"Nonsense, James; don't talk like that!"
+
+But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on.  There were
+Roger and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons.  And Swithin
+and Timothy had never married.  He had done his best; but he would
+soon be gone now.  And, as though he had uttered words of profound
+consolation, he was silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece
+of bread, and swallowing the bread.
+
+Soames excused himself directly after dinner.  It was not really
+cold, but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him
+against the fits of nervous shivering to which he had been subject
+all day.  Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than
+in an ordinary black overcoat.  Then, feeling the morocco case flat
+against his heart, he sallied forth.  He was no smoker, but he lit
+a cigarette, and smoked it gingerly as he walked along.  He moved
+slowly down the Row towards Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to
+Chelsea at nine-fifteen.  What did she do with herself evening
+after evening in that little hole?  How mysterious women were!  One
+lived alongside and knew nothing of them.  What could she have seen
+in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad?  For there was madness
+after all in what she had done--crazy moonstruck madness, in which
+all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his life
+ruined!  And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation,
+as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the
+Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence,
+forgiving and forgetting, and becoming  the godfather of her
+future.  Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the
+moon-light struck down clear and white, he took out once more the
+morocco case, and let the beams draw colour from those stones.
+Yes, they were of the first water!  But, at the hard closing snap
+of the case, another cold shiver ran through his nerves; and he
+walked on faster, clenching his gloved hands in the pockets of his
+coat, almost hoping she would not be in.  The thought of how
+mysterious she was again beset him.  Dining alone there night after
+night--in an evening dress, too, as if she were making believe to
+be in society!  Playing the piano--to herself!  Not even a dog or
+cat, so far as he had seen.  And that reminded him suddenly of the
+mare he kept for station work at Mapledurham.  If ever he went to
+the stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her
+home journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if longing
+to be back and lonely in her stable!  'I would treat her well,' he
+thought incoherently.  'I would be very careful.'  And all that
+capacity for home life of which a mocking Fate seemed for ever to
+have deprived him swelled suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed
+dreams opposite South Kensington Station.  In the King's Road a man
+came slithering out of a public house playing a concertina.  Soames
+watched him for a moment dance crazily on the pavement to his own
+drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with
+this piece of drunken foolery.  A night in the lock-up!  What asses
+people were!  But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance,
+and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street.
+'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously.  'To have
+ruffians like that about, with women out alone!'  A woman's figure
+in front had induced this thought.  Her walk seemed oddly familiar,
+and when she turned the corner for which he was bound, his heart
+began to beat.  He hastened on to the corner to make certain.
+Yes!  It was Irene; he could not mistake her walk in that little
+drab street.  She threaded two more turnings, and from the last
+corner he saw her enter her block of flats.  To make sure of her
+now, he ran those few paces, hurried up the stairs, and caught her
+standing at her door.  He heard the latchkey in the lock, and
+reached her side just as she turned round, startled, in the open
+doorway.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," he said, breathless.  "I happened to see you.
+Let me come in a minute."
+
+She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless, her
+eyes widened by alarm.  Then seeming to master herself, she
+inclined her head, and said: "Very well."
+
+Soames closed the door.  He, too, had need to recover, and when she
+had passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute, taking deep
+breaths to still the beating of his heart.  At this moment, so
+fraught with the future, to take out that morocco case seemed
+crude.  Yet, not to take it out left him there before her with no
+preliminary excuse for coming.  And in this dilemma he was seized
+with impatience at all this paraphernalia of excuse and
+justification.  This was a scene--it could be nothing else, and he
+must face it.  He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically
+soft:
+
+"Why have you come again?  Didn't you understand that I would
+rather you did not?"
+
+He noticed her clothes--a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa,
+a small round toque of the same.  They suited her admirably.  She
+had money to spare for dress, evidently!  He said abruptly:
+
+"It's your birthday.  I brought you this," and he held out to her
+the green morocco case.
+
+"Oh!  No-no!"
+
+Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale
+grey velvet.
+
+"Why not?" he said.  "Just as a sign that you don't bear me ill-
+feeling any longer."
+
+"I couldn't."
+
+Soames took it out of the case.
+
+"Let me just see how it looks."
+
+She shrank back.
+
+He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the
+front of her dress.  She shrank again.
+
+Soames dropped his hand.
+
+"Irene," he said, "let bygones be bygones.  If I can, surely you
+might.  Let's begin again, as if nothing had been.  Won't you?"
+His voice was wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in
+them a sort of supplication.
+
+She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall,
+gave a little gulp, and that was all her answer.  Soames went on:
+
+"Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little
+hole?  Come back to me, and I'll give you all you want.  You shall
+live your own life; I swear it."
+
+He saw her face quiver ironically.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, "but I mean it this time.  I'll only ask one
+thing.  I just want--I just want a son.  Don't look like that!  I
+want one.  It's hard."  His voice had grown hurried, so that he
+hardly knew it for his own, and twice he jerked his head back as if
+struggling for breath.  It was the sight of her eyes fixed on him,
+dark with a sort of fascinated fright, which pulled him together
+and changed that painful incoherence to anger.
+
+"Is it so very unnatural?" he said between his teeth, "Is it
+unnatural to want a child from one's own wife?  You wrecked our
+life and put this blight on everything.  We go on only half alive,
+and without any future.  Is it so very unflattering to you that in
+spite of everything I--I still want you for my wife?  Speak, for
+Goodness' sake! do speak."
+
+Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.
+
+"I don't want to frighten you," said Soames more gently.  "Heaven
+knows.  I only want you to see that I can't go on like this.  I
+want you back.  I want you."
+
+Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but
+her eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to
+keep him at bay.  And all those years, barren and bitter, since--
+ah! when?--almost since he had first known her, surged up in one
+great wave of recollection in Soames; and a spasm that for his life
+he could not control constricted his face.
+
+"It's not too late," he said; "it's not--if you'll only believe
+it."
+
+Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing
+gesture in front of her breast.  Soames seized them.
+
+"Don't!" she said under her breath.  But he stood holding on to
+them, trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver.  Then she
+said quietly:
+
+"I am alone here.  You won't behave again as you once behaved."
+
+Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned
+away.  Was it possible that there could be such relentless
+unforgiveness!  Could that one act of violent possession be still
+alive within her?  Did it bar him thus utterly?  And doggedly he
+said, without looking up:
+
+"I am not going till you've answered me.  I am offering what few
+men would bring themselves to offer, I want a--a reasonable
+answer."
+
+And almost with surprise he heard her say:
+
+"You can't have a reasonable answer.  Reason has nothing to do with
+it.  You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die."
+
+Soames stared at her.
+
+"Oh!" he said.  And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of
+speech and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man
+has received a deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is going
+to take it, or rather what it is going to do with him.
+
+"Oh!" he said again, "as bad as that?  Indeed!  You would rather
+die.  That's pretty!"
+
+"I am sorry.  You wanted me to answer.  I can't help the truth, can
+I?"
+
+At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to
+actuality.  He snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in
+his pocket.
+
+"The truth!" he said; "there's no such thing with women.  It's
+nerves-nerves."
+
+He heard the whisper:
+
+"Yes; nerves don't lie.  Haven't you discovered that?" He was
+silent, obsessed by the thought: 'I will hate this woman.  I will
+hate her.'  That was the trouble!  If only he could!  He shot a
+glance at her who stood unmoving against the wall with her head up
+and her hands clasped, for all the world as if she were going to be
+shot.  And he said quickly:
+
+"I don't believe a word of it.  You have a lover.  If you hadn't,
+you wouldn't be such a--such a little idiot."  He was conscious,
+before the expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of
+a non-sequitur, and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal
+freedom of his connubial days.  He turned away to the door.  But he
+could not go out.  Something within him--that most deep and secret
+Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the impossibility
+of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his own tenacity--
+prevented him.  He turned about again, and there stood, with his
+back against the door, as hers was against the wall opposite, quite
+unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by the whole
+width of the room.
+
+"Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?" he said.
+
+Irene's lips quivered; then she answered slowly:
+
+"Do you ever think that I found out my mistake--my hopeless,
+terrible mistake--the very first week of our marriage; that I went
+on trying three years--you know I went on trying?  Was it for
+myself?"
+
+Soames gritted his teeth.  "God knows what it was.  I've never
+understood you; I shall never understand you.  You had everything
+you wanted; and you can have it again, and more.  What's the matter
+with me?  I ask you a plain question: What is it?"  Unconscious of
+the pathos in that enquiry, he went on passionately: "I'm not lame,
+I'm not loathsome, I'm not a boor, I'm not a fool.  What is it?
+What's the mystery about me?"
+
+Her answer was a long sigh.
+
+He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full
+of expression.  "When I came here to-night I was--I hoped--I meant
+everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair
+again.  And you meet me with 'nerves,' and silence, and sighs.
+There's nothing tangible.  It's like--it's like a spider's web."
+
+"Yes."
+
+That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.
+
+"Well, I don't choose to be in a spider's web.  I'll cut it."  He
+walked straight up to her.  "Now!"  What he had gone up to her to
+do he really did not know.  But when he was close, the old familiar
+scent of her clothes suddenly affected him.  He put his hands on
+her shoulders and bent forward to kiss her.  He kissed not her
+lips, but a little hard line where the lips had been drawn in; then
+his face was pressed away by her hands; he heard her say: "Oh!
+No!"  Shame, compunction, sense of futility flooded his whole
+being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+VISIT TO IRENE
+
+
+Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington.  She had
+received his telegram while at breakfast.  Her abode--a studio and
+two bedrooms in a St. John's Wood garden--had been selected by her
+for the complete independence which it guaranteed.  Unwatched by
+Mrs. Grundy, unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive
+lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck
+without studio of its own made use of June's.  She enjoyed her
+freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the
+warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which--
+given her Forsyte tenacity--he must surely have tired, she now
+expended in championship of the underdogs and budding 'geniuses' of
+the artistic world.  She lived, in fact, to turn ducks into the
+swans she believed they were.  The very fervour of her protection
+warped her judgments.  But she was loyal and liberal; her small
+eager hand was ever against the oppressions of academic and
+commercial opinion, and though her income was considerable, her
+bank balance was often a minus quantity.
+
+She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit to
+Eric Cobbley.  A miserable Gallery had refused to let that
+straight-haired genius have his one-man show after all.  Its
+impudent manager, after visiting his studio, had expressed the
+opinion that it would only be a 'one-horse show from the selling
+point of view.'  This crowning example of commercial cowardice
+towards her favourite lame duck--and he so hard up, with a wife and
+two children, that he had caused her account to be overdrawn--was
+still making the blood glow in her small, resolute face, and her
+red-gold hair to shine more than ever.  She gave her father a hug,
+and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as
+he with her.  It became at once a question which would fry them
+first.
+
+Jolyon had reached the words: "My dear, I want you to come with
+me," when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes
+moving from side to side--like the tail of a preoccupied cat--that
+she was not attending.  "Dad, is it true that I absolutely can't
+get at any of my money?"
+
+"Only the income, fortunately, my love."
+
+"How perfectly beastly!  Can't it be done somehow?  There must be a
+way.  I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds."
+
+"A small Gallery," murmured Jolyon, "seems a modest desire.  But
+your grandfather foresaw it."
+
+"I think," cried June vigorously, "that all this care about money
+is awful, when there's so much genius in the world simply crushed
+out for want of a little.  I shall never marry and have children;
+why shouldn't I be able to do some good instead of having it all
+tied up in case of things which will never come off?"
+
+"Our name is Forsyte, my dear," replied Jolyon in the ironical
+voice to which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown
+accustomed; "and Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle their
+property that their grandchildren, in case they should die before
+their parents, have to make wills leaving the property that will
+only come to themselves when their parents die.  Do you follow
+that?  Nor do I, but it's a fact, anyway; we live by the principle
+that so long as there is a possibility of keeping wealth in the
+family it must not go out; if you die unmarried, your money goes to
+Jolly and Holly and their children if they marry.  Isn't it
+pleasant to know that whatever you do you can none of you be
+destitute?"
+
+"But can't I borrow the money?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head.  "You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if you
+could manage it out of your income."
+
+June uttered a contemptuous sound.
+
+"Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with."
+
+"My dear child," murmured Jolyon, "wouldn't it come to the same
+thing?"
+
+"No," said June shrewdly, "I could buy for ten thousand; that would
+only be four hundred a year.  But I should have to pay a thousand a
+year rent, and that would only leave me five hundred.  If I had the
+Gallery, Dad, think what I could do.  I could make Eric Cobbley's
+name in no time, and ever so many others."
+
+"Names worth making make themselves in time."
+
+"When they're dead."
+
+"Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having his
+name made?"
+
+"Yes, you," said June, pressing his arm.
+
+Jolyon started.  'I?' he thought.  'Oh!  Ah!  Now she's going to
+ask me to do something.  We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our
+different ways.'
+
+June came closer to him in the cab.
+
+"Darling," she said, "you buy the Gallery, and I'll pay you four
+hundred a year for it.  Then neither of us will be any the worse
+off.  Besides, it's a splendid investment."
+
+Jolyon wriggled.  "Don't you think," he said, "that for an artist
+to buy a Gallery is a bit dubious?  Besides, ten thousand pounds is
+a lump, and I'm not a commercial character."
+
+June looked at him with admiring appraisement.
+
+"Of course you're not, but you're awfully businesslike.  And I'm
+sure we could make it pay.  It'll be a perfect way of scoring off
+those wretched dealers and people."  And again she squeezed her
+father's arm.
+
+Jolyon's face expressed quizzical despair.
+
+"Where is this desirable Gallery?  Splendidly situated, I suppose?"
+
+"Just off Cork Street."
+
+'Ah!'  thought Jolyon, 'I knew it was just off somewhere.  Now for
+what I want out of her!'
+
+"Well, I'll think of it, but not just now.  You remember Irene?  I
+want you to come with me and see her.  Soames is after her again.
+She might be safer if we could give her asylum somewhere."
+
+The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most
+calculated to rouse June's interest.
+
+"Irene!  I haven't seen her since!  Of course!  I'd love to help
+her."
+
+It was Jolyon's turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for
+this spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting.
+
+"Irene is proud," he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden doubt
+of June's discretion; "she's difficult to help.  We must tread
+gently.  This is the place.  I wired her to expect us.  Let's send
+up our cards."
+
+"I can't bear Soames," said June as she got out; "he sneers at
+everything that isn't successful"
+
+Irene was in what was called the 'Ladies' drawing-room' of the
+Piedmont Hotel.
+
+Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her
+former friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a sofa
+never sat on since the hotel's foundation.  Jolyon could see that
+Irene was deeply affected by this simple forgiveness.
+
+"So Soames has been worrying you?" he said.
+
+"I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to him."
+
+"You're not going, of course?" cried June.
+
+Irene smiled faintly and shook her head.  "But his position is
+horrible," she murmured.
+
+"It's his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he could."
+
+Jolyon remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped
+that no divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover's name.
+
+"Let us hear what Irene is going to do," he said.
+
+Irene's lips quivered, but she spoke calmly.
+
+"I'd better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me."
+
+"How horrible!"  cried June.
+
+"What else can I do?"
+
+"Out of the question," said Jolyon very quietly, "sans amour."
+
+He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she half
+turned her back on them, and stood regaining control of herself.
+
+June said suddenly:
+
+"Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone.
+What does he want at his age?"
+
+"A child.  It's not unnatural"
+
+"A child!" cried June scornfully.  "Of course!  To leave his money
+to.  If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have
+one; then you can divorce him, and he can marry her."
+
+Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring June-
+-her violent partizanship was fighting Soames' battle.
+
+"It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill,
+and see how things shape."
+
+"Of course," said June; "only...."
+
+Irene looked full at Jolyon--in all his many attempts afterwards to
+analyze that glance he never could succeed.
+
+"No!  I should only bring trouble on you all.  I will go abroad."
+
+He knew from her voice that this was final.  The irrelevant thought
+flashed through him: 'Well, I could see her there.'  But he said:
+
+"Don't you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he
+followed?"
+
+"I don't know.  I can but try."
+
+June sprang up and paced the room.  "It's all horrible," she said.
+"Why should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless year
+after year by this disgusting sanctimonious law?"  But someone had
+come into the room, and June came to a standstill.  Jolyon went up
+to Irene:
+
+"Do you want money?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And would you like me to let your flat?"
+
+"Yes, Jolyon, please."
+
+"When shall you be going?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"You won't go back there in the meantime, will you?"  This he said
+with an anxiety strange to himself.
+
+"No; I've got all I want here."
+
+"You'll send me your address?"
+
+She put out her hand to him.  "I feel you're a rock."
+
+"Built on sand," answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; "but it's
+a pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that.  And if you
+change your mind....!  Come along, June; say good-bye."
+
+June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene.
+
+"Don't think of him," she said under her breath; "enjoy yourself,
+and bless you!"
+
+With a memory of tears in Irene's eyes, and of a smile on her lips,
+they went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had
+interrupted the interview and was turning over the papers on the
+table.
+
+Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed:
+
+"Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!"
+
+But Jolyon did not respond.  He had something of his father's
+balance, and could see things impartially even when his emotions
+were roused.  Irene was right; Soames' position was as bad or worse
+than her own.  As for the law--it catered for a human nature of
+which it took a naturally low view.  And, feeling that if he stayed
+in his daughter's company he would in one way or another commit an
+indiscretion, he told her he must catch his train back to Oxford;
+and hailing a cab, left her to Turner's water-colours, with the
+promise that he would think over that Gallery.
+
+But he thought over Irene instead.  Pity, they said, was akin to
+love!  If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he
+pitied her profoundly.  To think of her drifting about Europe so
+handicapped and lonely!  'I hope to goodness she'll keep her head!'
+he thought; 'she might easily grow desperate.'  In fact, now that
+she had cut loose from her poor threads of occupation, he couldn't
+imagine how she would go on--so beautiful a creature, hopeless, and
+fair game for anyone!  In his exasperation was more than a little
+fear and jealousy.  Women did strange things when they were driven
+into corners.  'I wonder what Soames will do now!'  he thought.  'A
+rotten, idiotic state of things!  And I suppose they would say it
+was her own fault.'  Very preoccupied and sore at heart, he got
+into his train, mislaid his ticket, and on the platform at Oxford
+took his hat off to a lady whose face he seemed to remember without
+being able to put a name to her, not even when he saw her having
+tea at the Rainbow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WHERE FORSYTES FEAR TO TREAD
+
+
+Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case
+still flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as
+death.  A spider's web!  Walking fast, and noting nothing in the
+moonlight, he brooded over the scene he had been through, over the
+memory of her figure rigid in his grasp.  And the more he brooded,
+the more certain he became that she had a lover--her words, 'I
+would sooner die!' were ridiculous if she had not.  Even if she had
+never loved him, she had made no fuss until Bosinney came on the
+scene.  No; she was in love again, or she would not have made that
+melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all the circumstances
+was reasonable!  Very well!  That simplified matters.
+
+'I'll take steps to know where I am,' he thought; 'I'll go to
+Polteed's the first thing tomorrow morning.'
+
+But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble
+with himself.  He had employed Polteed's agency several times in
+the routine of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie's
+case, but he had never thought it possible to employ them to watch
+his own wife.
+
+It was too insulting to himself!
+
+He slept over that project and his wounded pride--or rather, kept
+vigil.  Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she called
+herself by her maiden name of Heron.  Polteed would not know, at
+first at all events, whose wife she was, would not look at him
+obsequiously and leer behind his back.  She would just be the wife
+of one of his clients.  And that would be true--for was he not his
+own solicitor?
+
+He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at the
+first possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail himself.  And
+making Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee; he stole out of
+the house before the hour of breakfast.  He walked rapidly to one
+of those small West End streets where Polteed's and other firms
+ministered to the virtues of the wealthier classes.  Hitherto he
+had always had Polteed to see him in the Poultry; but he well knew
+their address, and reached it at the opening hour.  In the outer
+office, a room furnished so cosily that it might have been a
+money-lender's, he was attended by a lady who might have been a
+schoolmistress.
+
+"I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed.  He knows me--never mind my
+name."
+
+To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was reduced
+to having his wife spied on, was the overpowering consideration.
+
+Mr. Claud Polteed--so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed--was one of
+those men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown
+eyes, who might be taken for Jews but are really Phoenicians; he
+received Soames in a room hushed by thickness of carpet and
+curtains.  It was, in fact, confidentially furnished, without trace
+of document anywhere to be seen.
+
+Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door
+with a certain ostentation.
+
+"If a client sends for me," he was in the habit of saying, "he
+takes what precaution he likes.  If he comes here, we convince him
+that we have no leakages.  I may safely say we lead in security, if
+in nothing else....Now, sir, what can I do for you?"
+
+Soames' gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak.  It was
+absolutely necessary to hide from this man that he had any but
+professional interest in the matter; and, mechanically, his face
+assumed its sideway smile.
+
+"I've come to you early like this because there's not an hour to
+lose"--if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet!  "Have you a
+really trustworthy woman free?"
+
+Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his eyes
+over it, and locked the drawer up again.
+
+"Yes," he said; "the very woman."
+
+Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs--nothing but a faint
+flush, which might have been his normal complexion, betrayed him.
+
+"Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat C,
+Truro Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice."
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Polteed; "divorce, I presume?" and he blew
+into a speaking-tube.  "Mrs. Blanch in?  I shall want to speak to
+her in ten minutes."
+
+"Deal with any reports yourself," resumed Soames, "and send them to
+me personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered.  My
+client exacts the utmost secrecy."
+
+Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, 'You are teaching your
+grandmother, my dear sir;' and his eyes slid over Soames' face for
+one unprofessional instant.
+
+"Make his mind perfectly easy," he said.  "Do you smoke?"
+
+"No," said Soames.  "Understand me: Nothing may come of this.  If a
+name gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very
+serious consequences."
+
+Mr. Polteed nodded.  "I can put it into the cipher category.  Under
+that system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers."
+
+He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote
+on them, and handed one to Soames.
+
+"Keep that, sir; it's your key.  I retain this duplicate.  The case
+we'll call 7x.  The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the
+Mansions 25; yourself--I should say, your firm--31; my firm 32,
+myself 2.  In case you should have to mention your client in
+writing I have called him 43; any person we suspect will be 47;
+a second person 51.  Any special hint or instruction while we're
+about it?"
+
+"No," said Soames; "that is--every consideration compatible."
+
+Again Mr. Polteed nodded.  "Expense?"
+
+Soames shrugged.  "In reason," he answered curtly, and got up.
+"Keep it entirely in your own hands."
+
+"Entirely," said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and
+the door.  "I shall be seeing you in that other case before long.
+Good morning, sir."  His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames
+once more, and he unlocked the door.
+
+"Good morning," said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.
+
+Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself.  A spider's
+web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean
+method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life
+as his most sacred piece of property.  But the die was cast, he
+could not go back.  And he went on into the Poultry, and locked
+away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher destined to
+make crystal-clear his domestic bankruptcy.
+
+Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all
+the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of
+others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own;
+and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole
+unfeeling process of legal regulation.
+
+He worked hard all day.  Winifred was due at four o'clock; he was
+to take her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C.,
+and waiting for her he re-read the letter he  had caused her to
+write the day of Dartie's departure, requiring him to return.
+
+
+"DEAR MONTAGUE,
+
+"I have received your letter with the news that you have left me
+for ever and are on your way to Buenos Aires.  It has naturally
+been a great shock.  I am taking this earliest opportunity of
+writing to tell you that I am prepared to let bygones be bygones if
+you will return to me at once.  I beg you to do so.  I am very much
+upset, and will not say any more now.  I am sending this letter
+registered to the address you left at your Club.  Please cable to
+me.
+
+"Your still affectionate wife,
+
+"WINIFRED DARTIE."
+
+
+Ugh!  What bitter humbug!  He remembered leaning over Winifred
+while she copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said,
+laying down her pen, "Suppose he comes, Soames!"  in such a strange
+tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind.  "He won't
+come," he had answered, "till he's spent his money.  That's why we
+must act at once."  Annexed to the copy of that letter was the
+original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club.  Soames
+could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor.
+Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on.  He seemed to hear
+the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously!  Seriously enough
+to write him as you did?  Do you think he meant it?"  Never mind!
+The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not returned.
+Annexed also was his cabled answer: "Impossible return.  Dartie."
+Soames shook his head.  If the whole thing were not disposed of
+within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a
+bad penny.  It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him,
+besides all the worry to Winifred and his father.  'I must stiffen
+Dreamer's back,' he thought; 'we must push it on.'
+
+Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her
+fair hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James' barouche
+drawn by James' pair.  Soames had not seen it in the City since his
+father retired from business five years ago, and its incongruity
+gave him a shock.  'Times are changing,' he thought; 'one doesn't
+know what'll go next!'  Top hats even were scarcer.  He enquired
+after Val.  Val, said Winifred, wrote that he was going to play
+polo next term.  She thought he was in a very good set.  She added
+with fashionably disguised anxiety: "Will there be much publicity
+about my affair, Soames?  Must it be in the papers?  It's so bad
+for him, and the girls."
+
+With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:
+
+"The papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to keep things
+out.  They pretend to be guarding the public's morals, and they
+corrupt them with their beastly reports.  But we haven't got to
+that yet.  We're only seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution
+question.  Of course he understands that it's to lead to a divorce;
+but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie back--you might
+practice that attitude to-day."
+
+Winifred sighed.
+
+"Oh!  What a clown Monty's been!"  she said.
+
+Soames gave her a sharp look.  It was clear to him that she could
+not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing
+if given half a chance.  His own instinct had been firm in this
+matter from the first.  To save a little scandal now would only
+bring on his sister and her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin
+later on if Dartie were allowed to hang on to them, going down-hill
+and spending the money James would leave his daughter.  Though it
+was all tied up, that fellow would milk the settlements somehow,
+and make his family pay through the nose to keep him out of
+bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol!  They left the shining carriage,
+with the shining horses and the shining-hatted servants on the
+Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.'s Chambers in Crown
+Office Row.
+
+"Mr. Bellby is here, sir," said the clerk; "Mr. Dreamer will be ten
+minutes."
+
+Mr. Bellby, the junior--not as junior as he might have been, for
+Soames only employed barristers of established reputation; it was,
+indeed, something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed
+to establish that which made him employ them--Mr. Bellby was
+seated, taking a final glance through his papers.  He had come from
+Court, and was in wig and gown, which suited a nose jutting out
+like the handle of a tiny pump, his small shrewd blue eyes, and
+rather protruding lower lip--no better man to supplement and
+stiffen Dreamer.
+
+The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the weather
+and spoke of the war.  Soames interrupted suddenly:
+
+"If he doesn't comply we can't bring proceedings for six months.  I
+want to get on with the matter, Bellby."
+
+Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at
+Winifred and murmured: "The Law's delays, Mrs. Dartie."
+
+"Six months!" repeated Soames; "it'll drive it up to June!  We
+shan't get the suit on till after the long vacation.  We must put
+the screw on, Bellby"--he would have all his work cut out to keep
+Winifred up to the scratch.
+
+"Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir."
+
+They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting
+Winifred after an interval of one minute by his watch.
+
+Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before
+the fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he
+had the leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great
+learning, a considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and
+little greyish whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking of
+one eye, and the concealment of his lower with his upper lip, which
+gave a smothered turn to his speech.  He had a way, too, of coming
+suddenly round the corner on the person he was talking to; this,
+with a disconcerting tone of voice, and a habit of growling before
+he began to speak--had secured a reputation second in Probate and
+Divorce to very few.  Having listened, eye cocked, to Mr. Bellby's
+breezy recapitulation of the facts, he growled, and said:
+
+"I know all that;" and coming round the corner at Winifred,
+smothered the words:
+
+"We want to get him back, don't we, Mrs. Dartie?"
+
+Soames interposed sharply:
+
+"My sister's position, of course, is intolerable."
+
+Dreamer growled.  "Exactly.  Now, can we rely on the cabled
+refusal, or must we wait till after Christmas to give him a chance
+to have written--that's the point, isn't it?"
+
+"The sooner...."  Soames began.
+
+"What do you say, Bellby?" said Dreamer, coming round his corner.
+
+Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.
+
+"We won't be on till the middle of December.  We've no need to give
+um more rope than that."
+
+"No," said Soames, "why should my sister be incommoded by his
+choosing to go..."
+
+"To Jericho!" said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; "quite
+so.  People oughtn't to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?"
+And he raised his gown into a sort of fantail.  "I agree.  We can
+go forward.  Is there anything more?"
+
+"Nothing at present," said Soames meaningly; "I wanted you to see
+my sister."
+
+Dreamer growled softly: "Delighted.  Good evening!"  And let fall
+the protection of his gown.
+
+They filed out.  Winifred went down the stairs.  Soames lingered.
+In spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.
+
+"The evidence is all right, I think," he said to Bellby.  "Between
+ourselves, if we don't get the thing through quick, we never may.
+D'you think he understands that?"
+
+"I'll make um," said Bellby.  "Good man though--good man."
+
+Soames nodded and hastened after his sister.  He found her in a
+draught, biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:
+
+"The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete."
+
+Winifred's face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to
+the carriage.  And, all through that silent drive back to Green
+Street, the souls of both of them revolved a single thought: 'Why,
+oh! why should I have to expose my misfortune to the public like
+this?  Why have to employ spies to peer into my private troubles?
+They were not of my making.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT
+
+
+The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was
+animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of
+what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the
+British body politic.  Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning
+a war which must affect property, had been heard to say that these
+Boers were a pig-headed lot; they were causing a lot of expense,
+and the sooner they had their lesson the better.  He would send out
+Wolseley!  Seeing always a little further than other people--whence
+the most considerable fortune of all the Forsytes--he had perceived
+already that Buller was not the man--'a bull of a chap, who just
+went butting, and if they didn't look out Ladysmith would fall.'
+This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he was
+enabled to say to everybody: 'I told you so.'  During that week of
+gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas
+attended so many drills in his corps, 'The Devil's Own,' that young
+Nicholas consulted the family physician about his son's health and
+was alarmed to find that he was perfectly sound.  The boy had only
+just eaten his dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense,
+and it was in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he
+should be playing with military efficiency at a time when military
+efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be wanted.
+His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly
+educated in the feeling that no British war could be other than
+little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of Imperial
+commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for he owned De
+Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient sacrifice on the
+part of his grandson.
+
+At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed.  The
+inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two
+months of the term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising
+out into vivid oppositions.  Normal adolescence, ever in England of
+a conservative tendency though not taking things too seriously, was
+vehement for a fight to a finish and a good licking for the Boers.
+Of this larger faction Val Dartie was naturally a member.  Radical
+youth, on the other hand, a small but perhaps more vocal body, was
+for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy.  Until Black
+Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and
+argument remained but academic.  Jolly was one of those who knew
+not where he stood.  A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon's love
+of justice prevented, him from seeing one side only.  Moreover, in
+his set of 'the best' there was a 'jumping-Jesus' of extremely
+advanced opinions and some personal magnetism.  Jolly wavered.  His
+father, too, seemed doubtful in his views.  And though, as was
+proper at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father,
+watchful for defects which might still be remedied, still that
+father had an 'air' which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of
+ironic tolerance.  Artists of course; were notoriously Hamlet-like,
+and to this extent one must discount for one's father, even if one
+loved him.  But Jolyon's original view, that to 'put your nose in
+where you aren't wanted' (as the Uitlanders had done) 'and then
+work the oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean
+potato,' had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction
+for his son, who thought a deal about gentility.  On the other hand
+Jolly could not abide such as his set called 'cranks,' and Val's
+set called 'smugs,' so that he was still balancing when the clock
+of Black Week struck.  One--two--three, came those ominous repulses
+at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso.  The sturdy English soul
+reacting after the first cried, 'Ah! but Methuen!' after the
+second: 'Ah! but Buller!' then, in inspissated gloom, hardened.
+And Jolly said to himself: 'No, damn it!  We've got to lick the
+beggars now; I don't care whether we're right or wrong.'  And, if
+he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought.
+
+That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with
+'one of the best.'  After the second toast, 'Buller and damnation
+to the Boers,' drunk--no heel taps--in the college Burgundy, he
+noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a
+grin and saying something to his neighbour.  He was sure it was
+disparaging.  The last boy in the world to make himself conspicuous
+or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red and shut his
+lips.  The queer hostility he had always felt towards his second-
+cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced.  'All right!'  he
+thought, 'you wait, my friend!'  More wine than was good for him,
+as the custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped
+forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.
+
+"What did you say about me in there?"
+
+"Mayn't I say what I like?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I said you were a pro-Boer--and so you are!"
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+"D'you want a row?"
+
+"Of course, but not here; in the garden."
+
+"All right.  Come on."
+
+They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching;
+they climbed the garden railings.  The spikes on the top slightly
+ripped Val's sleeve, and occupied his mind.  Jolly's mind was
+occupied by the thought that they were going to fight in the
+precincts of a college foreign to them both.  It was not the thing,
+but never mind--the young beast!
+
+They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took off
+their coats.
+
+"You're not screwed, are you?" said Jolly suddenly.  "I can't fight
+you if you're screwed."
+
+"No more than you."
+
+"All right then."
+
+Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of
+defence.  They had drunk too much for science, and so were
+especially careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote
+Val almost accidentally on the nose.  After that it was all a dark
+and ugly scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one
+to call 'time,' till, battered and blown, they unclinched and
+staggered back from each other, as a voice said:
+
+"Your names, young gentlemen?"
+
+At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate,
+like some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up
+their coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made
+for the secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight.  Here,
+in dim light, they mopped their faces, and without a word walked,
+ten paces apart, to the college gate.  They went out silently, Val
+going towards the Broad along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane
+towards the High.  His head, still fumed, was busy with regret that
+he had not displayed more science, passing in review the counters
+and knockout blows which he had not delivered.  His mind strayed on
+to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike that which he had just
+been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and sword, with thrust
+and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved Dumas.  He
+fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and D'Artagnan
+rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as Coconnas,
+Brissac, or Rochefort.  The fellow was just a confounded cousin who
+didn't come up to Cocker.  Never mind!  He had given him one or
+two.  'Pro-Boer!'  The word still rankled, and thoughts of en-
+listing jostled his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing
+gallantly, while the Boers rolled over like rabbits.  And, turning
+up his smarting eyes, he saw the stars shining between the house-
+tops of the High, and himself lying out on the Karoo (whatever that
+was) rolled in a blanket, with his rifle ready and his gaze fixed
+on a glittering heaven.
+
+He had a fearful 'head' next morning, which he doctored, as became
+one of 'the best,' by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong
+coffee which he could not drink, and only sipping a little Hock at
+lunch.  The legend that 'some fool' had run into him round a corner
+accounted for a bruise on his cheek.  He would on no account have
+mentioned the fight, for, on second thoughts, it fell far short of
+his standards.
+
+The next day he went 'down,' and travelled through to Robin Hill.
+Nobody was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to
+Paris.  He spent a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of
+touch with either of his sisters.  June, indeed, was occupied with
+lame ducks, whom, as a rule, Jolly could not stand, especially that
+Eric Cobbley and his family, 'hopeless outsiders,' who were always
+littering up the house in the Vacation.  And between Holly and
+himself there was a strange division, as if she were beginning to
+have opinions of her own, which was so--unnecessary.  He punched
+viciously at a ball, rode furiously but alone in Richmond Park,
+making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles put up to close
+certain worn avenues of grass--keeping his nerve in, he called it.
+Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are.  He
+bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting
+across the pond into the kitchen-garden wall, to the peril of
+gardeners, with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist
+and save South Africa for his country.  In fact, now that they were
+appealing for Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset.
+Ought he to go?  None of 'the best,' so far as he knew--and he was
+in correspondence with several--were thinking of joining.  If they
+had been making a move he would have gone at once--very compet-
+itive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be
+left behind in anything--but to do it off his own bat might look
+like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary.
+Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young
+Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked.  It was altogether
+mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became
+quite unlike his serene and rather lordly self.
+
+And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath--two
+riders, in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she
+on the left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and
+he on the right-hand as assuredly that 'squirt' Val Dartie.  His
+first impulse was to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning
+of this portent, tell the fellow to 'bunk,' and take Holly home.
+His second--to feel that he would look a fool if they refused.  He
+reined his horse in behind a tree, then perceived that it was
+equally impossible to spy on them.  Nothing for it but to go home
+and await her coming!  Sneaking out with that young bounder!  He
+could not consult with June, because she had gone up that morning
+in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot.  And his father was still
+in 'that rotten Paris.'  He felt that this was emphatically one of
+those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at
+school, where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to
+newspapers and placed them in the centre of their studies to
+accustom them to coolness in moments of danger.  He did not feel at
+all cool waiting in the stable-yard, idly stroking the dog
+Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat monk, and sad in the absence of
+his master, turned up his face, panting with gratitude for this
+attention.  It was half an hour before Holly came, flushed and ever
+so much prettier than she had any right to look.  He saw her look
+at him quickly--guiltily of course--then followed her in, and,
+taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their grand-
+father's study.  The room, not much used now, was still vaguely
+haunted for them both by a presence with which they associated
+tenderness, large drooping white moustaches, the scent of cigar
+smoke, and laughter.  Here Jolly, in the prime of his youth, before
+he went to school at all, had been wont to wrestle with his grand-
+father, who even at eighty had an irresistible habit of crooking
+his leg.  Here Holly, perched on the arm of the great leather
+chair, had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which she
+would whisper secrets.  Through that window they had all three
+sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn, and a
+mysterious game called 'Wopsy-doozle,' not to be understood by
+outsiders, which made old Jolyon very hot.  Here once on a warm
+night Holly had appeared in her 'nighty,' having had a bad dream,
+to have the clutch of it released.  And here Jolly, having begun
+the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle
+Beauce's new-laid egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent down (in
+the absence of his father) to the ensuing dialogue:
+
+"Now, my boy, you mustn't go on like this."
+
+"Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she
+boxed mine again."
+
+"Strike a lady?  That'll never do!  Have you begged her pardon?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Then you must go and do it at once.  Come along."
+
+"But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one."
+
+"My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do."
+
+"Well, she lost her temper; and I didn't lose mine."
+
+"Come along."
+
+"You come too, then, Gran."
+
+"Well--this time only."
+
+And they had gone hand in hand.
+
+Here--where the Waverley novels and Byron's works and Gibbon's
+Roman Empire and Humboldt's Cosmos, and the bronzes on the
+mantelpiece, and that masterpiece of the oily school, 'Dutch
+Fishing-Boats at Sunset,' were fixed as fate, and for all sign of
+change old Jolyon might have been sitting there still, with legs
+crossed, in the arm chair, and domed forehead and deep eyes grave
+above The Times--here they came, those two grandchildren.  And
+Jolly said:
+
+"I saw you and that fellow in the Park."
+
+The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some
+satisfaction; she ought to be ashamed!
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.
+
+"Do you know," he said weightily, "that he called me a pro-Boer
+last term?  And I had to fight him."
+
+"Who won?"
+
+Jolly wished to answer: 'I should have,' but it seemed beneath him.
+
+"Look here!" he said, "what's the meaning of it?  Without telling
+anybody!"
+
+"Why should I?  Dad isn't here; why shouldn't I ride with him?"
+
+"You've got me to ride with.  I think he's an awful young rotter."
+
+Holly went pale with anger.
+
+"He isn't.  It's your own fault for not liking him."
+
+And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at
+the bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded
+from him so far by his sister's dark head under her soft felt
+riding hat.  He felt queerly disturbed, shaken to his young
+foundations.  A lifelong domination lay shattered round his feet.
+He went up to the Venus and mechanically inspected the tortoise.
+
+Why didn't he like Val Dartie?  He could not tell.  Ignorant of
+family history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started
+thirteen years before with Bosinney's defection from June in favour
+of Soames' wife, knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at
+sea.  He just did dislike him.  The question, however, was: What
+should he do?  Val Dartie, it was true, was a second-cousin, but it
+was not the thing for Holly to go about with him.  And yet to
+'tell' of what he had chanced on was against his creed.  In this
+dilemma he went and sat in the old leather chair and crossed his
+legs.  It grew dark while he sat there staring out through the long
+window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves, becoming
+slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.
+
+'Grandfather!' he thought without sequence, and took out his watch.
+He could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going.  'Five
+o'clock!'  His grandfather's first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth
+with age--all the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of
+many a fall.  The chime was like a little voice from out of that
+golden age, when they first came from St.  John's Wood, London, to
+this house--came driving with grandfather in his carriage, and
+almost instantly took to the trees.  Trees to climb, and grand-
+father watering the geranium-beds below!  What was to be done?
+Tell Dad he must come home?  Confide in June?--only she was so--so
+sudden!  Do nothing and trust to luck?  After all, the Vac.  would
+soon be over.  Go up and see Val and warn him off?  But how get his
+address?  Holly wouldn't give it him!  A maze of paths, a cloud of
+possibilities!  He lit a cigarette.  When he had smoked it halfway
+through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been
+passed gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper:
+'Do nothing; be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!'  And Jolly
+heaved a sigh of contentment, blowing smoke through his nostrils....
+
+But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still
+frowning.  'He is not--he is not!'  were the words which kept
+forming on her lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JOLYON IN TWO MINDS
+
+
+A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare
+St. Lazare was Jolyon's haunt in Paris.  He hated his fellow
+Forsytes abroad--vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden
+runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge.  Their air of
+having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as
+possible annoyed him.  But no other Forsyte came near this haunt,
+where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was excel-
+lent.  Paris was always to him more attractive in winter.  The
+acrid savour from woodsmoke and chestnut-roasting braziers, the
+sharpness of the wintry sunshine on bright rays, the open cafes
+defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained brisk boulevard
+crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a soul
+which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.
+
+He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where
+pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed.  He felt
+philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a
+subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a
+darkness shot with shifting gleams of light.
+
+When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he
+was far from admitting that Irene's presence was influencing him.
+He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to see
+her had been more than half the reason.  In England one did not
+admit what was natural.  He had thought it might be well to speak
+to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but in
+Paris he at once knew better.  There was a glamour over the city.
+On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer which
+procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:
+
+
+"MY DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"It will be a happiness for me to see you.
+
+" IRENE."
+
+
+He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as
+he had often had going to visit an adored picture.  No woman, so
+far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sen-
+suous and yet impersonal sensation.  He was going to sit and feast
+his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to go and
+feast his eyes again to-morrow.  Such was his feeling, when in the
+tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near the river
+she came to him preceded by a small page-boy who uttered the word,
+"Madame," and vanished.  Her face, her smile, the poise of her
+figure, were just as he had pictured, and the expression of her
+face said plainly: 'A friend!'
+
+"Well," he said, "what news, poor exile?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Nothing from Soames?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you
+some money.  How do you like Paris?"
+
+While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he
+had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving
+just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least
+conceivable dimple.  It was like discovering a woman in what had
+hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost
+impersonally admired.  She owned that to be alone in Paris was a
+little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that
+it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert.  Besides,
+the English were not liked just now!
+
+"That will hardly be your case," said Jolyon; "you should appeal to
+the French."
+
+"It has its disadvantages."
+
+Jolyon nodded.
+
+"Well, you must let me take you about while I'm here.  We'll start
+to-morrow.  Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we'll go to the
+Opera-Comique."
+
+It was the beginning of daily meetings.
+
+Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of
+the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which
+to be friendly with a pretty woman.  Revelation was alighting like
+a bird in his heart, singing: 'Elle est ton reve!  Elle est ton
+reve!  Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous--a bad
+case of elderly rapture.  Having once been ostracised by Society,
+he had never since had any real regard for conventional morality;
+but the idea of a love which she could never return--and how could
+she at his age?--hardly mounted beyond his subconscious mind.  He
+was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and loneliness of her
+life.  Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the pleasure she
+clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably desirous
+of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure.  It was like
+watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink in his
+companionship.  So far as they could tell, no one knew her address
+except himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known,
+so that discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits
+to concerts, picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners,
+expeditions to Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau.  And time
+fled--one of those full months without past to it or future.  What
+in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now
+perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective
+companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry-
+-arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there, smiling
+and happy in their friendship, and always to him more beautiful and
+spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life seemed to march
+in admirable step with his own, conditioned by emotion more than by
+reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to beauty, almost
+passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to instinctive
+rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable.  And during
+all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with
+which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work
+of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire.  The future--inexorable
+pendant to the present he took care not to face, for fear of
+breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this
+time in places still more delightful, where the sun was hot and
+there were strange things to see and paint.  The end came swiftly
+on the 20th of January with a telegram:
+
+
+"Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry.
+JOLLY."
+
+
+Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the
+Louvre.  It brought him up with a round turn.  While he was lotus-
+eating here, his boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought to be,
+had taken this great step towards danger, hardship, perhaps even
+death.  He felt disturbed to the soul, realising suddenly how Irene
+had twined herself round the roots of his being.  Thus threatened
+with severance, the tie between them--for it had become a kind of
+tie--no longer had impersonal quality.  The tranquil enjoyment of
+things in common, Jolyon perceived, was gone for ever.  He saw his
+feeling as it was, in the nature of an infatuation.  Ridiculous,
+perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose itself.
+And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any such
+disclosure.  The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way.  He was
+proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight
+for the country; for on Jolyon's pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had
+left its mark.  And so the end was reached before the beginning!
+Well, luckily he had never made a sign!
+
+When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the 'Virgin
+of the Rocks,' graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious.  'Have
+I to give up seeing that?' he thought.  'It's unnatural, so long as
+she's willing that I should see her.'  He stood, unnoticed,
+watching her, storing up the image of her figure, envying the
+picture on which she was bending that long scrutiny.  Twice she
+turned her head towards the entrance, and he thought: 'That's for
+me!'  At last he went forward.
+
+"Look!" he said.
+
+She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.
+
+That sigh, too, was for him!  His position was really cruel!  To be
+loyal to his son he must just shake her hand and go.  To be loyal
+to the feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that
+feeling was.  Could she, would she understand the silence in which
+he was gazing at that picture?
+
+"I'm afraid I must go home at once," he said at last.  "I shall
+miss all this awfully."
+
+"So shall I; but, of course, you must go."
+
+"Well!" said Jolyon holding out his hand.
+
+Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.
+
+"Such is life!" he said.  "Take care of yourself, my dear!"
+
+He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his brain
+refused to steer him away from her.  From the doorway, he saw her
+lift her hand and touch its fingers with her lips.  He raised his
+hat solemnly, and did not look back again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+DARTIE VERSUS DARTIE
+
+
+The suit--Dartie versus Dartie--for restitution of those conjugal
+rights concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided,
+followed the laws of subtraction towards day of judgment.  This was
+not reached before the Courts rose for Christmas, but the case was
+third on the list when they sat again.  Winifred spent the
+Christmas holidays a thought more fashionably than usual, with the
+matter locked up in her low-cut bosom.  James was particularly
+liberal to her that Christmas, expressing thereby his sympathy, and
+relief, at the approaching dissolution of her marriage with that
+'precious rascal,' which his old heart felt but his old lips could
+not utter.
+
+The disappearance of Dartie made the fall in Consols a
+comparatively small matter; and as to the scandal--the real animus
+he felt against that fellow, and the increasing lead which property
+was attaining over reputation in a true Forsyte about to leave this
+world, served to drug a mind from which all allusions to the matter
+(except his own) were studiously kept.  What worried him as a
+lawyer and a parent was the fear that Dartie might suddenly turn up
+and obey the Order of the Court when made.  That would be a pretty
+how-de-do!  The fear preyed on him in fact so much that, in
+presenting Winifred with a large Christmas cheque, he said: "It's
+chiefly for that chap out there; to keep him from coming back."  It
+was, of course, to pitch away good money, but all in the nature of
+insurance against that bankruptcy which would no longer hang over
+him if only the divorce went through; and he questioned Winifred
+rigorously until she could assure him that the money had been sent.
+Poor woman!--it cost her many a pang to send what must find its way
+into the vanity-bag of 'that creature!'  Soames, hearing of it,
+shook his head.  They were not dealing with a Forsyte, reasonably
+tenacious of his purpose.  It was very risky without knowing how
+the land lay out there.  Still, it would look well with the Court;
+and he would see that Dreamer brought it out.  "I wonder," he said
+suddenly, "where that ballet goes after the Argentine"; never
+omitting a chance of reminder; for he knew that Winifred still had
+a weakness, if not for Dartie, at least for not laundering him in
+public.  Though not good at showing admiration, he admitted that
+she was behaving extremely well, with all her children at home
+gaping like young birds for news of their father--Imogen just on
+the point of coming out, and Val very restive about the whole
+thing.  He felt that Val was the real heart of the matter to
+Winifred, who certainly loved him beyond her other children.  The
+boy could spoke the wheel of this divorce yet if he set his mind to
+it.  And Soames was very careful to keep the proximity of the
+preliminary proceedings from his nephew's ears.  He did more.  He
+asked him to dine at the Remove, and over Val's cigar introduced
+the subject which he knew to be nearest to his heart.
+
+"I hear," he said, "that you want to play polo up at Oxford."
+
+Val became less recumbent in his chair.
+
+"Rather!" he said.
+
+"Well," continued Soames, "that's a very expensive business.  Your
+grandfather isn't likely to consent to it unless he can make sure
+that he's not got any other drain on him."  And he paused to see
+whether the boy understood his meaning.
+
+Val's thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace
+appeared on his wide mouth, and he muttered:
+
+"I suppose you mean my Dad!"
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "I'm afraid it depends on whether he continues
+to be a drag or not;" and said no more, letting the boy dream it
+over.
+
+But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey
+and a girl riding it.  Though Crum was in town and an introduction
+to Cynthia Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask; indeed,
+he shunned Crum and lived a life strange even to himself, except in
+so far as accounts with tailor and livery stable were concerned.
+To his mother, his sisters, his young brother, he seemed to spend
+this Vacation in 'seeing fellows,' and his evenings sleepily at
+home.  They could not propose anything in daylight that did not
+meet with the one response: "Sorry; I've got to see a fellow"; and
+he was put to extraordinary shifts to get in and out of the house
+unobserved in riding clothes; until, being made a member of the
+Goat's Club, he was able to transport them there, where he could
+change unregarded and slip off on his hack to Richmond Park.  He
+kept his growing sentiment religiously to himself.  Not for a world
+would he breathe to the 'fellows,' whom he was not 'seeing,'
+anything so ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and
+his.  But he could not help its destroying his other appetites.  It
+was coming between him and the legitimate pleasures of youth at
+last on its own in a way which must, he knew, make him a milksop in
+the eyes of Crum.  All he cared for was to dress in his last-
+created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin Hill Gate, where
+presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling with its slim
+and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves they would
+go off side by side, not talking very much, riding races sometimes,
+and sometimes holding hands.  More than once of an evening, in a
+moment of expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how
+this shy sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his
+'life.'  But bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five
+were spoil-sports, prevented him.  After all, he supposed he would
+have to go through with College, and she would have to 'come out,'
+before they could be married; so why complicate things, so long as
+he could see her?  Sisters were teasing and unsympathetic beings, a
+brother worse, so there was no one to confide in.  Ah!  And this
+beastly divorce business!  What a misfortune to have a name which
+other people hadn't!  If only he had been called Gordon or Scott or
+Howard or something fairly common!  But Dartie--there wasn't
+another in the directory!  One might as well have been named Morkin
+for all the covert it afforded!  So matters went on, till one day
+in the middle of January the silver-roan palfrey and its rider were
+missing at the tryst.  Lingering in the cold, he debated whether he
+should ride on to the house: But Jolly might be there, and the
+memory of their dark encounter was still fresh within him.  One
+could not be always fighting with her brother!  So he returned
+dismally to town and spent an evening plunged in gloom.  At
+breakfast next day he noticed that his mother had on an unfamiliar
+dress and was wearing her hat.  The dress was black with a glimpse
+of peacock blue, the hat black and large--she looked exceptionally
+well.  But when after breakfast she said to him, "Come in here,
+Val," and led the way to the drawing-room, he was at once beset by
+qualms.  Winifred carefully shut the door and passed her
+handkerchief over her lips; inhaling the violette de Parme with
+which it had been soaked, Val thought: 'Has she found out about
+Holly?'
+
+Her voice interrupted
+
+"Are you going to be nice to me, dear boy?"
+
+Val grinned doubtfully.
+
+"Will you come with me this morning...."
+
+"I've got to see...."  began Val, but something in her face stopped
+him.  "I say," he said, "you don't mean...."
+
+"Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning."  Already!--that
+d---d business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since
+nobody ever mentioned it.  In self-commiseration he stood picking
+little bits of skin off his fingers.  Then noticing that his
+mother's lips were all awry, he said impulsively: "All right,
+mother; I'll come.  The brutes!"  What brutes he did not know, but
+the expression exactly summed up their joint feeling, and restored
+a measure of equanimity.
+
+"I suppose I'd better change into a 'shooter,"' he muttered,
+escaping to his room.  He put on the 'shooter,' a higher collar, a
+pearl pin, and his neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous
+accompaniment.  Looking at himself in the glass, he said, "Well,
+I'm damned if I'm going to show anything!" and went down.  He found
+his grandfather's carriage at the door, and his mother in furs,
+with the appearance of one going to a Mansion House Assembly.  They
+seated themselves side by side in the closed barouche, and all the
+way to the Courts of Justice Val made but one allusion to the
+business in hand.  "There'll be nothing about those pearls, will
+there?"
+
+The little tufted white tails of Winifred's muff began to shiver.
+
+"Oh, no," she said, "it'll be quite harmless to-day.  Your
+grandmother wanted to come too, but I wouldn't let her.  I thought
+you could take care of me.  You look so nice, Val.  Just pull your
+coat collar up a little more at the back--that's right."
+
+"If they bully you...."  began Val.
+
+"Oh! they won't.  I shall be very cool.  It's the only way."
+
+"They won't want me to give evidence or anything?"
+
+"No, dear; it's all arranged."  And she patted his hand.  The
+determined front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in Val's
+chest, and he busied himself in drawing his gloves off and on.  He
+had taken what he now saw was the wrong pair to go with his spats;
+they should have been grey, but were deerskin of a dark tan;
+whether to keep them on or not he could not decide.  They arrived
+soon after ten.  It was his first visit to the Law Courts, and the
+building struck him at once.
+
+"By Jove!" he said as they passed into the hall, "this'd make four
+or five jolly good racket courts."
+
+Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs.
+
+"Here you are!" he said, without shaking hands, as if the event had
+made them too familiar for such formalities.  "It's Happerly
+Browne, Court I.  We shall be on first."
+
+A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing
+now in the top of Val's chest, but he followed his mother and uncle
+doggedly, looking at no more than he could help, and thinking that
+the place smelled 'fuggy.'  People seemed to be lurking everywhere,
+and he plucked Soames by the sleeve.
+
+"I say, Uncle, you're not going to let those beastly papers in, are
+you?"
+
+Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to silence
+in its time.
+
+"In here," he said.  "You needn't take off your furs, Winifred."
+
+Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up.  In this
+confounded hole everybody--and there were a good many of them--
+seemed sitting on everybody else's knee, though really divided from
+each other by pews; and Val had a feeling that they might all slip
+down together into the well.  This, however, was but a momentary
+vision--of mahogany, and black gowns, and white blobs of wigs and
+faces and papers, all rather secret and whispery--before he was
+sitting next his mother in the front row, with his back to it all,
+glad of her violette de Parme, and taking off his gloves for the
+last time.  His mother was looking at him; he was suddenly
+conscious that she had really wanted him there next to her, and
+that he counted for something in this business.
+
+All right!  He would show them!  Squaring his shoulders, he crossed
+his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats.  But just then an 'old
+Johnny' in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny
+raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite, and
+he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand up with everybody
+else.
+
+'Dartie versus Dartie!'
+
+It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one's name called
+out like this in public!  And, suddenly conscious that someone
+nearly behind him had begun talking about his family, he screwed
+his face round to see an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he
+were eating his own words--queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man
+he had seen once or twice dining at Park Lane and punishing the
+port; he knew now where they 'dug them up.'  All the same he found
+the old buffer quite fascinating, and would have continued to stare
+if his mother had not touched his arm.  Reduced to gazing before
+him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge's face instead.  Why should
+that old 'sportsman' with his sarcastic mouth and his quick-moving
+eyes have the power to meddle with their private affairs--hadn't he
+affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as nasty?  And
+there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated
+individualism of his breed.  The voice behind him droned along:
+"Differences about money matters--extravagance of the respondent"
+(What a word!  Was that his father?)--"strained situation--frequent
+absences on the part of Mr. Dartie.  My client, very rightly, your
+Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course--but lead to
+ruin--remonstrated--gambling at cards and on the racecourse--"
+('That's right!' thought Val, 'pile it on!') "Crisis early in
+October, when the respondent wrote her this letter from his Club."
+Val sat up and his ears burned.  "I propose to read it with the
+emendations necessary to the epistle of a gentleman who has been--
+shall we say dining, me Lud?"
+
+'Old brute!' thought Val, flushing deeper; 'you're not paid to make
+jokes!'
+
+"'You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house.
+I am leaving the country to-morrow.  It's played out'--an
+expression, your Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who
+have not met with conspicuous success."
+
+'Sniggering owls!' thought Val, and his flush deepened.
+
+"'I am tired of being insulted by you.'  My client will tell your
+Ludship that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him
+'the limit',--a very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all
+the circumstances."
+
+Val glanced sideways at his mother's impassive face, it had a
+hunted look in the eyes.  'Poor mother,' he thought, and touched
+her arm with his own.  The voice behind droned on.
+
+"'I am going to live a new life.  M.  D.'"
+
+"And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship
+Tuscarora for Buenos Aires.  Since then we have nothing from him
+but a cabled refusal in answer to the letter which my client wrote
+the following day in great distress, begging him to return to her.
+With your Ludship's permission.  I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the
+box."
+
+When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and
+say: 'Look here!  I'm going to see you jolly well treat her
+decently.'  He subdued it, however; heard her saying, 'the truth,
+the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' and looked up.  She
+made a rich figure of it, in her furs and large hat, with a slight
+flush on her cheek-bones, calm, matter-of-fact; and he felt proud
+of her thus confronting all these 'confounded lawyers.'  The
+examination began.  Knowing that this was only the preliminary to
+divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the questions framed so
+as to give the impression that she really wanted his father back.
+It seemed to him that they were 'foxing Old Bagwigs finely.'
+
+And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly:
+
+"Now, why did your husband leave you--not because you called him
+'the limit,' you know?"
+
+Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving
+his face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told
+him that the issue was in peril.  Had Uncle Soames and the old
+buffer behind made a mess of it?  His mother was speaking with a
+slight drawl.
+
+"No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time."
+
+"What had gone on?"
+
+"Our differences about money."
+
+"But you supplied the money.  Do you suggest that he left you to
+better his position?"
+
+'The brute!  The old brute, and nothing but the brute!'  thought
+Val suddenly.  'He smells a rat he's trying to get at the pastry!'
+And his heart stood still.  If--if he did, then, of course, he
+would know that his mother didn't really want his father back.  His
+mother spoke again, a thought more fashionably.
+
+"No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money.
+It took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last--and
+when he did...."
+
+"I see, you had refused.  But you've sent him some since."
+
+"My Lord, I wanted him back."
+
+"And you thought that would bring him?"
+
+"I don't know, my Lord, I acted on my father's advice."
+
+Something in the Judge's face, in the sound of the papers behind
+him, in the sudden crossing of his uncle's legs, told Val that she
+had made just the right answer.  'Crafty!'  he thought; 'by Jove,
+what humbug it all is!'
+
+The Judge was speaking:
+
+"Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie.  Are you still fond of your
+husband?"
+
+Val's hands, slack behind him, became fists.  What business had
+that Judge to make things human suddenly?  To make his mother speak
+out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn't know herself,
+before all these people!  It wasn't decent.  His mother answered,
+rather low: "Yes, my Lord."  Val saw the Judge nod.  'Wish I could
+take a cock-shy at your head!' he thought irreverently, as his
+mother came back to her seat beside him.  Witnesses to his father's
+departure and continued absence followed--one of their own maids
+even, which struck Val as particularly beastly; there was more
+talking, all humbug; and then the Judge pronounced the decree for
+restitution, and they got up to go.  Val walked out behind his
+mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level best to
+despise everybody.  His mother's voice in the corridor roused him
+from an angry trance.
+
+"You behaved beautifully, dear.  It was such a comfort to have you.
+Your uncle and I are going to lunch."
+
+"All right," said Val; "I shall have time to go and see that
+fellow."  And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs
+and out into the air.  He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the
+Goat's Club.  His thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before
+her brother showed her this thing in to-morrow's paper.
+
+              *******************************
+
+When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the
+Cheshire Cheese.  He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr.
+Bellby.  At that early hour of noon they would have it to
+themselves, and Winifred had thought it would be 'amusing' to see
+this far-famed hostelry.  Having ordered a light repast, to the
+consternation of the waiter, they awaited its arrival together with
+that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after the hour and a half's
+suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity.  Mr. Bellby entered
+presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were glum.
+Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was the
+matter with that!
+
+"Quite," said Soames in a suitably low voice, "but we shall have to
+begin again to get evidence.  He'll probably try the divorce--it
+will look fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from the
+start.  His questions showed well enough that he doesn't like this
+restitution dodge."
+
+"Pho!" said Mr. Bellby cheerily, "he'll forget!  Why, man, he'll
+have tried a hundred cases between now and then.  Besides, he's
+bound by precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is
+satisfactory.  We won't let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge
+of the facts.  Dreamer did it very nicely--he's got a fatherly
+touch about um!"
+
+Soames nodded.
+
+"And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie," went on Mr. Bellby; "ye've a
+natural gift for giving evidence.  Steady as a rock."
+
+Here the, waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and
+the remark: "I 'urried up the pudden, sir.  You'll find plenty o'
+lark in it to-day."
+
+Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose.  But
+Soames and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of
+gravified brown masses, touching them gingerly with their forks in
+the hope of distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little song-
+givers.  Having begun, however, they found they were hungrier than
+they thought, and finished the lot, with a glass of port apiece.
+Conversation turned on the war.  Soames thought Ladysmith would
+fall, and it might last a year.  Bellby thought it would be over by
+the summer.  Both agreed that they wanted more men.  There was
+nothing for it but complete victory, since it was now a question of
+prestige.  Winifred brought things back to more solid ground by
+saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come on till after
+the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the boys would have
+forgotten about it before Val had to go up again; the London season
+too would be over.  The lawyers reassured her, an interval of six
+months was necessary--after that the earlier the better.  People
+were now beginning to come in, and they parted--Soames to the city,
+Bellby to his chambers, Winifred in a hansom to Park Lane to let
+her mother know how she had fared.  The issue had been so
+satisfactory on the whole that it was considered advisable to tell
+James, who never failed to say day after day that he didn't know
+about Winifred's affair, he couldn't tell.  As his sands ran out;
+the importance of mundane matters became increasingly grave to him,
+as if he were feeling: 'I must make the most of it, and worry well;
+I shall soon have nothing to worry about.'
+
+He received the report grudgingly.  It was a new-fangled way of
+going about things, and he didn't know!  But he gave Winifred a
+cheque, saying:
+
+"I expect you'll have a lot of expense.  That's a new hat you've
+got on.  Why doesn't Val come and see us?"
+
+Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon.  And, going home,
+she sought her bedroom where she could be alone.  Now that her
+husband had been ordered back into her custody with a view to
+putting him away from her for ever, she would try once more to find
+out from her sore and lonely heart what she really wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CHALLENGE
+
+
+The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out
+while Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would
+canter on to the usual tryst.  His spirits were rising rapidly.
+There had been nothing so very terrible in the morning's
+proceedings beyond the general disgrace of violated privacy.  'If
+we were engaged!'  he thought, 'what happens wouldn't matter.'  He
+felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and clamours at the
+results of matrimony, and hastens to get married.  And he galloped
+over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be late.
+But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second
+defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully.  He could not
+go back without seeing her to-day!  Emerging from the Park, he
+proceeded towards Robin Hill.  He could not make up his mind for
+whom to ask.  Suppose her father were back, or her sister or
+brother were in!  He decided to gamble, and ask for them all first,
+so that if he were in luck and they were not there, it would be
+quite natural in the end to ask for Holly; while if any of them
+were in--an 'excuse for a ride' must be his saving grace.
+
+"Only Miss Holly is in, sir."
+
+"Oh! thanks.  Might I take my horse round to the stables?  And
+would you say--her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie."
+
+When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy.  She
+led him to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat.
+
+"I've been awfully anxious," said Val in a low voice.  "What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Jolly knows about our riding."
+
+"Is he in?"
+
+"No; but I expect he will be soon."
+
+"Then!" cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand.  She
+tried to withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at
+him wistfully.
+
+"First of all," he said, "I want to tell you something about my
+family.  My Dad, you know, isn't altogether--I mean, he's left my
+mother and they're trying to divorce him; so they've ordered him to
+come back, you see.  You'll see that in the paper to-morrow."
+
+Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand squeezed
+his.  But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he hurried on:
+
+"Of course there's nothing very much at present, but there will be,
+I expect, before it's over; divorce suits are beastly, you know.  I
+wanted to tell you, because--because--you ought to know--if--" and
+he began to stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, "if--if you're
+going to be a darling and love me, Holly.  I love you--ever so; and
+I want to be engaged."  He had done it in a manner so inadequate
+that he could have punched his own head; and dropping on his knees,
+he tried to get nearer to that soft, troubled face.  "You do love
+me--don't you?  If you don't I...." There was a moment of silence
+and suspense, so awful that he could hear the sound of a mowing-
+machine far out on the lawn pretending there was grass to cut.
+Then she swayed forward; her free hand touched his hair, and he
+gasped: "Oh, Holly!"
+
+Her answer was very soft: "Oh, Val!"
+
+He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood, as
+the masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched,
+trembly.  He was afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break
+the spell; lest, if he did, she should shrink and deny her own
+surrender--so tremulous was she in his grasp, with her eyelids
+closed and his lips nearing them.  Her eyes opened, seemed to swim
+a little; he pressed his lips to hers.  Suddenly he sprang up;
+there had been footsteps, a sort of startled grunt.  He looked
+round.  No one!  But the long curtains which barred off the outer
+hall were quivering.
+
+"My God!  Who was that?"
+
+Holly too was on her feet.
+
+"Jolly, I expect," she whispered.
+
+Val clenched fists and resolution.
+
+"All right!" he said, "I don't care a bit now we're engaged," and
+striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside.  There at the
+fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately
+turned.  Val went forward.  Jolly faced round on him.
+
+"I beg your pardon for hearing," he said.
+
+With the best intentions in the world, Val could not help admiring
+him at that moment; his face was clear, his voice quiet, he looked
+somehow distinguished, as if acting up to principle.
+
+"Well!" Val said abruptly, "it's nothing to you."
+
+"Oh!" said Jolly; "you come this way," and he crossed the hall.
+Val followed.  At the study door he felt a touch on his arm;
+Holly's voice said:
+
+"I'm coming too."
+
+"No," said Jolly.
+
+"Yes," said Holly.
+
+Jolly opened the door, and they all three went in.  Once in the
+little room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of
+the worn Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each
+other, quite incapable of seeing any humour in the situation.
+
+Val broke the silence.
+
+"Holly and I are engaged.",
+
+Jolly stepped back and leaned against the lintel of the window.
+
+"This is our house," he said; "I'm not going to insult you in it.
+But my father's away.  I'm in charge of my sister.  You've taken
+advantage of me.
+
+"I didn't mean to," said Val hotly.
+
+"I think you did," said Jolly.  "If you hadn't meant to, you'd have
+spoken to me, or waited for my father to come back."
+
+"There were reasons," said Val.
+
+"What reasons?"
+
+"About my family--I've just told her.  I wanted her to know before
+things happen."
+
+Jolly suddenly became less distinguished.
+
+"You're kids," he said, "and you know you are.
+
+"I am not a kid," said Val.
+
+"You are--you're not twenty."
+
+"Well, what are you?"
+
+"I am twenty," said Jolly.
+
+"Only just; anyway, I'm as good a man as you."
+
+Jolly's face crimsoned, then clouded.  Some struggle was evidently
+taking place in him; and Val and Holly stared at him, so clearly
+was that struggle marked; they could even hear him breathing.  Then
+his face cleared up and became oddly resolute.
+
+"We'll see that," he said.  "I dare you to do what I'm going to
+do."
+
+"Dare me?"
+
+Jolly smiled.  "Yes," he said, "dare you; and I know very well you
+won't."
+
+A stab of misgiving shot through Val; this was riding very blind.
+
+"I haven't forgotten that you're a fire-eater," said Jolly slowly,
+"and I think that's about all you are; or that you called me a
+pro-Boer."
+
+Val heard a gasp above the sound of his own hard breathing, and saw
+Holly's face poked a little forward, very pale, with big eyes.
+
+"Yes," went on Jolly with a sort of smile, "we shall soon see.  I'm
+going to join the Imperial Yeomanry, and I dare you to do the same,
+Mr. Val Dartie."
+
+Val's head jerked on its stem.  It was like a blow between the
+eyes, so utterly unthought of, so extreme and ugly in the midst of
+his dreaming; and he looked at Holly with eyes grown suddenly,
+touchingly haggard.
+
+"Sit down!" said Jolly.  "Take your time!  Think it over well."
+And he himself sat down on the arm of his grandfather's chair.
+
+Val did not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his
+breeches' pockets-hands clenched and quivering.  The full awfulness
+of this decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with
+double knocks as of an angry postman.  If he did not take that
+'dare' he was disgraced in Holly's eyes, and in the eyes of that
+young enemy, her brute of a brother.  Yet if he took it, ah! then
+all would vanish--her face, her eyes, her hair, her kisses just
+begun!
+
+"Take your time," said Jolly again; "I don't want to be unfair."
+
+And they both looked at Holly.  She had recoiled against the
+bookshelves reaching to the ceiling; her dark head leaned against
+Gibbon's Roman Empire, her eyes in a sort of soft grey agony were
+fixed on Val.  And he, who had not much gift of insight, had
+suddenly a gleam of vision.  She would be proud of her brother--
+that enemy!  She would be ashamed of him!  His hands came out of
+his pockets as if lifted by a spring.
+
+"All right!" he said.  "Done!"
+
+Holly's face--oh! it was queer!  He saw her flush, start forward.
+He had done the right thing--her face was shining with wistful
+admiration.  Jolly stood up and made a little bow as who should
+say: 'You've passed.'
+
+"To-morrow, then," he said, "we'll go together."
+
+Recovering from the impetus which had carried him to that decision,
+Val looked at him maliciously from under his lashes.  'All right,'
+he thought, 'one to you.  I shall have to join--but I'll get back
+on you somehow.'  And he said with dignity: "I shall be ready."
+
+"We'll meet at the main Recruiting Office, then," said Jolly, "at
+twelve o'clock."  And, opening the window, he went out on to the
+terrace, conforming to the creed which had made him retire when he
+surprised them in the hall.
+
+The confusion in the mind of Val thus left alone with her for whom
+he had paid this sudden price was extreme.  The mood of 'showing-
+off' was still, however, uppermost.  One must do the wretched thing
+with an air.
+
+"We shall get plenty of riding and shooting, anyway," he said;
+"that's one comfort."  And it gave him a sort of grim pleasure to
+hear the sigh which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart.
+
+"Oh! the war'll soon be over," he said; "perhaps we shan't even
+have to go out.  I don't care, except for you."  He would be out of
+the way of that beastly divorce.  It was an ill-wind!  He felt her
+warm hand slip into his.  Jolly thought he had stopped their loving
+each other, did he?  He held her tightly round the waist, looking
+at her softly through his lashes, smiling to cheer her up,
+promising to come down and see her soon, feeling somehow six inches
+taller and much more in command of her than he had ever dared feel
+before.  Many times he kissed her before he mounted and rode back
+to town.  So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does the
+possessive instinct flourish and grow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DINNER AT JAMES'
+
+
+Dinner parties were not now given at James' in Park Lane--to every
+house the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer 'up to
+it'; no more can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above
+twenty fine white expanses; nor does the household cat any longer
+wonder why she is suddenly shut up.
+
+So with something like excitement Emily--who at seventy would still
+have liked a little feast and fashion now and then--ordered dinner
+for six instead of two, herself wrote a number of foreign words on
+cards, and arranged the flowers--mimosa from the Riviera, and white
+Roman hyacinths not from Rome.  There would only be, of course,
+James and herself, Soames, Winifred, Val, and Imogen--but she liked
+to pretend a little and dally in imagination with the glory of the
+past.  She so dressed herself that James remarked:
+
+"What are you putting on that thing for?  You'll catch cold."
+
+But Emily knew that the necks of women are protected by love of
+shining, unto fourscore years, and she only answered:
+
+"Let me put you on one of those dickies I got you, James; then
+you'll only have to change your trousers, and put on your velvet
+coat, and there you'll be.  Val likes you to look nice."
+
+"Dicky!" said James.  "You're always wasting your money on
+something."
+
+But he suffered the change to be made till his neck also shone,
+murmuring vaguely:
+
+"He's an extravagant chap, I'm afraid."
+
+A little brighter in the eye, with rather more colour than usual in
+his cheeks, he took his seat in the drawing-room to wait for the
+sound of the front-door bell.
+
+"I've made it a proper dinner party," Emily said comfortably; "I
+thought it would be good practice for Imogen--she must get used to
+it now she's coming out."
+
+James uttered an indeterminate sound, thinking of Imogen as she
+used to climb about his knee or pull Christmas crackers with him.
+
+"She'll be pretty," he muttered, "I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"She is pretty," said Emily; "she ought to make a good match."
+
+"There you go," murmured James; "she'd much better stay at home and
+look after her mother."  A second Dartie carrying off his pretty
+granddaughter would finish him!  He had never quite forgiven Emily
+for having been as much taken in by Montague Dartie as he himself
+had been.
+
+"Where's Warmson?" he said suddenly.  "I should like a glass of
+Madeira to-night."
+
+"There's champagne, James."
+
+James shook his head.  "No body," he said; "I can't get any good
+out of it."
+
+Emily reached forward on her side of the fire and rang the bell.
+
+"Your master would like a bottle of Madeira opened, Warmson."
+
+"No, no!" said James, the tips of his ears quivering with
+vehemence, and his eyes fixed on an object seen by him alone.
+"Look here, Warmson, you go to the inner cellar, and on the middle
+shelf of the end bin on the left you'll see seven bottles; take the
+one in the centre, and don't shake it.  It's the last of the
+Madeira I had from Mr. Jolyon when we came in here--never been
+moved; it ought to be in prime condition still; but I don't know, I
+can't tell."
+
+"Very good, sir," responded the withdrawing Warmson.
+
+"I was keeping it for our golden wedding," said James suddenly,
+"but I shan't live three years at my age."
+
+"Nonsense, James," said Emily, "don't talk like that."
+
+"I ought to have got it up myself," murmured James, "he'll shake it
+as likely as not."  And he sank into silent recollection of long
+moments among the open gas-jets, the cobwebs and the good smell of
+wine-soaked corks, which had been appetiser to so many feasts.  In
+the wine from that cellar was written the history of the forty odd
+years since he had come to the Park Lane house with his young
+bride, and of the many generations of friends and acquaintances who
+had passed into the unknown; its depleted bins preserved the record
+of family festivity--all the marriages, births, deaths of his kith
+and kin.  And when he was gone there it would be, and he didn't
+know what would become of it.  It'd be drunk or spoiled, he
+shouldn't wonder!
+
+From that deep reverie the entrance of his son dragged him,
+followed very soon by that of Winifred and her two eldest.
+
+They went down arm-in-arm--James with Imogen, the debutante,
+because his pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred;
+Emily with Val, whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened.
+This was to be a proper full 'blowout' with 'fizz' and port!  And
+he felt in need of it, after what he had done that day, as yet
+undivulged.  After the first glass or two it became pleasant to
+have this bombshell up his sleeve, this piece of sensational
+patriotism, or example, rather, of personal daring, to display--for
+his pleasure in what he had done for his Queen and Country was so
+far entirely personal.  He was now a 'blood,' indissolubly
+connected with guns and horses; he had a right to swagger--not, of
+course, that he was going to.  He should just announce it quietly,
+when there was a pause.  And, glancing down the menu, he determined
+on 'Bombe aux fraises' as the proper moment; there would be a
+certain solemnity while they were eating that.  Once or twice
+before they reached that rosy summit of the dinner he was attacked
+by remembrance that his grandfather was never told anything!
+Still, the old boy was drinking Madeira, and looking jolly fit!
+Besides, he ought to be pleased at this set-off to the disgrace of
+the divorce.  The sight of his uncle opposite, too, was a sharp
+incentive.  He was so far from being a sportsman that it would be
+worth a lot to see his face.  Besides, better to tell his mother in
+this way than privately, which might upset them both!  He was sorry
+for her, but after all one couldn't be expected to feel much for
+others when one had to part from Holly.
+
+His grandfather's voice travelled to him thinly.  "Val, try a
+little of the Madeira with your ice.  You won't get that up at
+college."
+
+Val watched the slow liquid filling his glass, the essential oil of
+the old wine glazing the surface; inhaled its aroma, and thought:
+'Now for it!'  It was a rich moment.  He sipped, and a gentle glow
+spread in his veins, already heated.  With a rapid look round, he
+said, "I joined the Imperial Yeomanry to-day, Granny," and emptied
+his glass as though drinking the health of his own act.
+
+"What!"  It was his mother's desolate little word.
+
+"Young Jolly Forsyte and I went down there together."
+
+"You didn't sign?" from Uncle Soames.
+
+"Rather!  We go into camp on Monday."
+
+"I say!" cried Imogen.
+
+All looked at James.  He was leaning forward with his hand behind
+his ear.
+
+"What's that?" he said.  "What's he saying?  I can't hear."
+
+Emily reached forward to pat Val's hand.
+
+"It's only that Val has joined the Yeomanry, James; it's very nice
+for him.  He'll look his best in uniform."
+
+"Joined the--rubbish!" came from James, tremulously loud.  "You
+can't see two yards before your nose.  He--he'll have to go out
+there.  Why! he'll be fighting before he knows where he is."
+
+Val saw Imogen's eyes admiring him, and his mother still and
+fashionable with her handkerchief before her lips.
+
+Suddenly his uncle spoke.
+
+"You're under age."
+
+"I thought of that," smiled Val; "I gave my age as twenty-one."
+
+He heard his grandmother's admiring, "Well, Val, that was plucky of
+you;" was conscious of Warmson deferentially filling his champagne
+glass; and of his grandfather's voice moaning: "I don't know
+what'll become of you if you go on like this."
+
+Imogen was patting his shoulder, his uncle looking at him sidelong;
+only his mother sat unmoving, till, affected by her stillness, Val
+said:
+
+"It's all right, you know; we shall soon have them on the run.  I
+only hope I shall come in for something."
+
+He felt elated, sorry, tremendously important all at once.  This
+would show Uncle Soames, and all the Forsytes, how to be sportsmen.
+He had certainly done something heroic and exceptional in giving
+his age as twenty-one.
+
+Emily's voice brought him back to earth.
+
+"You mustn't have a second glass, James.  Warmson!"
+
+"Won't they be astonished at Timothy's!" burst out Imogen.  "I'd
+give anything to see their faces.  Do you have a sword, Val, or
+only a popgun?"
+
+"What made you?"
+
+His uncle's voice produced a slight chill in the pit of Val's
+stomach.  Made him?  How answer that?  He was grateful for his
+grandmother's comfortable:
+
+"Well, I think it's very plucky of Val.  I'm sure he'll make a
+splendid soldier; he's just the figure for it.  We shall all be
+proud of him."
+
+"What had young Jolly Forsyte to do with it?  Why did you go
+together?" pursued Soames, uncannily relentless.  "I thought you
+weren't friendly with him?"
+
+"I'm not," mumbled Val, "but I wasn't going to be beaten by him."
+He saw his uncle look at him quite differently, as if approving.
+His grandfather was nodding too, his grandmother tossing her head.
+They all approved of his not being beaten by that cousin of his.
+There must be a reason!  Val was dimly conscious of some disturbing
+point outside his range of vision; as it might be, the unlocated
+centre of a cyclone.  And, staring at his uncle's face, he had a
+quite unaccountable vision of a woman with dark eyes, gold hair,
+and a white neck, who smelt nice, and had pretty silken clothes
+which he had liked feeling when he was quite small.  By Jove, yes!
+Aunt Irene!  She used to kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once,
+playfully, because he liked it--so soft.  His grandfather was
+speaking:
+
+"What's his father doing?"
+
+"He's away in Paris," Val said, staring at the very queer
+expression on his uncle's face, like--like that of a snarling dog.
+
+"Artists!" said James.  The word coming from the very bottom of his
+soul, broke up the dinner.
+
+Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-
+fruits of heroism, like medlars over-ripe.
+
+She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor's at once and
+have his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they
+gave him.  But he could feel that she was very much upset.  It was
+on his lips to console her with the spoken thought that he would be
+out of the way of that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen,
+and the knowledge that his mother would not be out of the way,
+restrained him.  He felt aggrieved that she did not seem more proud
+of him.  When Imogen had gone to bed, he risked the emotional.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother."
+
+"Well, I must make the best of it.  We must try and get you a
+commission as soon as we can; then you won't have to rough it so.
+Do you know any drill, Val?"
+
+"Not a scrap."
+
+"I hope they won't worry you much.  I must take you about to get
+the things to-morrow.  Good-night; kiss me."
+
+With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, 'I
+hope they won't worry you much,' in his ears, he sat down to a
+cigarette, before a dying fire.  The heat was out of him--the glow
+of cutting a dash.  It was all a damned heart-aching bore.  'I'll
+be even with that chap Jolly,' he thought, trailing up the stairs,
+past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a
+sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob.
+
+And soon only one of the diners at James' was awake--Soames, in his
+bedroom above his father's.
+
+So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris--what was he doing there?
+Hanging round Irene!  The last report from Polteed had hinted that
+there might be something soon.  Could it be this?  That fellow,
+with his beard and his cursed amused way of speaking--son of the
+old man who had given him the nickname 'Man of Property,' and
+bought the fatal house from him.  Soames had ever resented having
+had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never forgiven his uncle for
+having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.
+
+Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across
+the Park.  Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of
+traffic; a frost coming; bare trees; a star or two.  'I'll see
+Polteed to-morrow,' he thought.  'By God!  I'm mad, I think, to
+want her still.  That fellow!  If...?  Um!  No!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR
+
+
+Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin
+Hill on Sunday morning.  He had sent no word beforehand, so walked
+up from the station, entering his domain by the coppice gate.
+Coming to the log seat fashioned out of an old fallen trunk, he sat
+down, first laying his overcoat on it.
+
+'Lumbago!'  he thought; 'that's what love ends in at my time of
+life!'  And suddenly Irene seemed very near, just as she had been
+that day of rambling at Fontainebleau when they had sat on a log to
+eat their lunch.  Hauntingly near!  Odour drawn out of fallen
+leaves by the pale-filtering sunlight soaked his nostrils.  'I'm
+glad it isn't spring,' he thought.  With the scent of sap, and the
+song of birds, and the bursting of the blossoms, it would have been
+unbearable!  'I hope I shall be over it by then, old fool that I
+am!' and picking up his coat, he walked on into the field.  He
+passed the pond and mounted the hill slowly.
+
+Near the top a hoarse barking greeted him.  Up on the lawn above
+the fernery he could see his old dog Balthasar.  The animal, whose
+dim eyes took his master for a stranger, was warning the world
+against him.  Jolyon gave his special whistle.  Even at that
+distance of a hundred yards and more he could see the dawning
+recognition in the obese brown-white body.  The old dog got off his
+haunches, and his tail, close-curled over his back, began a feeble,
+excited fluttering; he came waddling forward, gathered momentum,
+and disappeared over the edge of the fernery.  Jolyon expected to
+meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar was not there, and,
+rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery.  On his fat side,
+looking up with eyes already glazing, the old dog lay.
+
+"What is it, my poor old man?" cried Jolyon.  Balthasar's curled
+and fluffy tail just moved; his filming eyes seemed saying: "I
+can't get up, master, but I'm glad to see you."
+
+Jolyon knelt down; his eyes, very dimmed, could hardly see the
+slowly ceasing heave of the dog's side.  He raised the head a
+little--very heavy.
+
+"What is it, dear man?  Where are you hurt?" The tail fluttered
+once; the eyes lost the look of life.  Jolyon passed his hands all
+over the inert warm bulk.  There was nothing--the heart had simply
+failed in that obese body from the emotion of his master's return.
+Jolyon could feel the muzzle, where a few whitish bristles grew,
+cooling already against his lips.  He stayed for some minutes
+kneeling; with his hand beneath the stiffening head.  The body was
+very heavy when he bore it to the top of the field; leaves had
+drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of them; there was
+no wind, and they would keep him from curious eyes until the
+afternoon.  'I'll bury him myself,' he thought.  Eighteen years had
+gone since he first went into the St. John's Wood house with that
+tiny puppy in his pocket.  Strange that the old dog should die just
+now!  Was it an omen?  He turned at the gate to look back at that
+russet mound, then went slowly towards the house, very choky in the
+throat.
+
+June was at home; she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news of
+Jolly's enlistment.  His patriotism had conquered her feeling for
+the Boers.  The atmosphere of his house was strange and pocketty
+when Jolyon came in and told them of the dog Balthasar's death.
+The news had a unifying effect.  A link with the past had snapped--
+the dog Balthasar!  Two of them could remember nothing before his
+day; to June he represented the last years of her grandfather; to
+Jolyon that life of domestic stress and aesthetic struggle before
+he came again into the kingdom of his father's love and wealth!
+And he was gone!
+
+In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out to
+the field.  They chose a spot close to the russet mound, so that
+they need not carry him far, and, carefully cutting off the surface
+turf, began to dig.  They dug in silence for ten minutes, and then
+rested.
+
+"Well, old man," said Jolyon, "so you thought you ought?"
+
+"Yes," answered Jolly; "I don't want to a bit, of course."
+
+How exactly those words represented Jolyon's own state of mind
+
+"I admire you for it, old boy.  I don't believe I should have done
+it at your age--too much of a Forsyte, I'm afraid.  But I suppose
+the type gets thinner with each generation.  Your son, if you have
+one, may be a pure altruist; who knows?"
+
+"He won't be like me, then, Dad; I'm beastly selfish."
+
+"No, my dear, that you clearly are not."  Jolly shook his head, and
+they dug again.
+
+"Strange life a dog's," said Jolyon suddenly: "The only four-footer
+with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!"
+
+Jolly looked at his father.
+
+"Do you believe in God, Dad?  I've never known."
+
+At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to
+make a light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back
+tried by the digging.
+
+"What do you mean by God?" he said; "there are two irreconcilable
+ideas of God.  There's the Unknowable Creative Principle--one
+believes in That.  And there's the Sum of altruism in man--naturally
+one believes in That."
+
+"I see.  That leaves out Christ, doesn't it?"
+
+Jolyon stared.  Christ, the link between those two ideas!  Out of
+the mouth of babes!  Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at
+last!  The sublime poem of the Christ life was man's attempt to
+join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God.  And since the
+Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative
+Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe, a worse link
+might have been chosen after all!  Funny--how one went through life
+without seeing it in that sort of way!
+
+"What do you think, old man?" he said.
+
+Jolly frowned.  "Of course, my first year we talked a good bit
+about that sort of thing.  But in the second year one gives it up;
+I don't know why--it's awfully interesting."
+
+Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it his
+first year at Cambridge, and given it up in his second.
+
+"I suppose," said Jolly, "it's the second God, you mean, that old
+Balthasar had a sense of."
+
+"Yes, or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of
+something outside himself."
+
+"But wasn't that just selfish emotion, really?"
+
+Jolyon shook his head.  "No, dogs are not pure Forsytes, they love
+something outside themselves."
+
+Jolly smiled.
+
+"Well, I think I'm one," he said.  "You know, I only enlisted
+because I dared Val Dartie to."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"We bar each other," said Jolly shortly.
+
+"Ah!" muttered Jolyon.  So the feud went on, unto the third
+generation--this modern feud which had no overt expression?
+
+'Shall I tell the boy about it?' he thought.  But to what end--if
+he had to stop short of his own part?
+
+And Jolly thought: 'It's for Holly to let him know about that chap.
+If she doesn't, it means she doesn't want him told, and I should be
+sneaking.  Anyway, I've stopped it.  I'd better leave well alone!'
+
+So they dug on in silence, till Jolyon said:
+
+"Now, old man, I think it's big enough."  And, resting on their
+spades, they gazed down into the hole where a few leaves had
+drifted already on a sunset wind.
+
+"I can't bear this part of it," said Jolyon suddenly.
+
+"Let me do it, Dad.  He never cared much for me."
+
+Jolyon shook his head.
+
+"We'll lift him very gently, leaves and all.  I'd rather not see
+him again.  I'll take his head.  Now!"
+
+With extreme care they raised the old dog's body, whose faded tan
+and white showed here and there under the leaves stirred by the
+wind.  They laid it, heavy, cold, and unresponsive, in the grave,
+and Jolly spread more leaves over it, while Jolyon, deeply afraid
+to show emotion before his son, began quickly shovelling the earth
+on to that still shape.  There went the past!  If only there were a
+joyful future to look forward to!  It was like stamping down earth
+on one's own life.  They replaced the turf carefully on the smooth
+little mound, and, grateful that they had spared each other's
+feelings, returned to the house arm-in-arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TIMOTHY STAYS THE ROT
+
+
+On Forsyte 'Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together
+with the report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become a
+Red Cross nurse.  These events were so extreme, so subversive of
+pure Forsyteism, as to have a binding effect upon the family, and
+Timothy's was thronged next Sunday afternoon by members trying to
+find out what they thought about it all, and exchange with each
+other a sense of family credit.  Giles and Jesse Hayman would no
+longer defend the coast but go to South Africa quite soon; Jolly
+and Val would be following in April; as to June--well, you never
+knew what she would really do.
+
+The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news from
+the seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in
+startling fashion by Timothy.  The youngest of the old Forsytes--
+scarcely eighty, in fact popularly supposed to resemble their
+father, 'Superior Dosset,' even in his best-known characteristic of
+drinking Sherry--had been invisible for so many years that he was
+almost mythical.  A long generation had elapsed since the risks of
+a publisher's business had worked on his nerves at the age of
+forty, so that he had got out with a mere thirty-five thousand
+pounds in the world, and started to make his living by careful
+investment.  Putting by every year, at compound interest, he had
+doubled his capital in forty years without having once known what
+it was like to shake in his shoes over money matters.  He was now
+putting aside some two thousand a year, and, with the care he was
+taking of himself, expected, so Aunt Hester said, to double his
+capital again before he died.  What he would do with it then, with
+his sisters dead and himself dead, was often mockingly queried by
+free spirits such as Francie, Euphemia, or young Nicholas' second,
+Christopher, whose spirit was so free that he had actually said he
+was going on the stage.  All admitted, however, that this was best
+known to Timothy himself, and possibly to Soames, who never
+divulged a secret.
+
+Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and
+robust appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion, grey
+hair, and little of the refinement of feature with which most of
+the Forsytes had been endowed by 'Superior Dosset's' wife, a woman
+of some beauty and a gentle temperament.  It was known that he had
+taken surprising interest in the war, sticking flags into a map
+ever since it began, and there was uneasiness as to what would
+happen if the English were driven into the sea, when it would be
+almost impossible for him to put the flags in the right places.  As
+to his knowledge of family movements or his views about them,
+little was known, save that Aunt Hester was always declaring that
+he was very upset.  It was, then, in the nature of a portent when
+Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after the evacuation of Spion Kop,
+became conscious, one after the other, of a presence seated in the
+only really comfortable armchair, back to the light, concealing the
+lower part of his face with a large hand, and were greeted by the
+awed voice of Aunt Hester:
+
+"Your Uncle Timothy, my dear."
+
+Timothy's greeting to them all was somewhat identical; and rather,
+as it were, passed over by him than expressed:
+
+"How de do?  How de do?  'Xcuse me gettin' up!"
+
+Francie was present, and Eustace had come in his car; Winifred had
+brought Imogen, breaking the ice of the restitution proceedings
+with the warmth of family appreciation at Val's enlistment; and
+Marian Tweetyman with the last news of Giles and Jesse.  These with
+Aunt Juley and Hester, young Nicholas, Euphemia, and--of all
+people!--George, who had come with Eustace in the car, constituted
+an assembly worthy of the family's palmiest days.  There was not
+one chair vacant in the whole of the little drawing-room, and
+anxiety was felt lest someone else should arrive.
+
+The constraint caused by Timothy's presence having worn off a
+little, conversation took a military turn.  George asked Aunt Juley
+when she was going out with the Red Cross, almost reducing her to a
+state of gaiety; whereon he turned to Nicholas and said:
+
+"Young Nick's a warrior bold, isn't he?  When's he going to don the
+wild khaki?"
+
+Young Nicholas, smiling with a sort of sweet deprecation, intimated
+that of course his mother was very anxious.
+
+"The Dromios are off, I hear," said George, turning to Marian
+Tweetyman; "we shall all be there soon.  En avant, the Forsytes!
+Roll, bowl, or pitch!  Who's for a cooler?"
+
+Aunt Juley gurgled, George was so droll!  Should Hester get
+Timothy's map?  Then he could show them all where they were.
+
+At a sound from Timothy, interpreted as assent, Aunt Hester left
+the room.
+
+George pursued his image of the Forsyte advance, addressing Timothy
+as Field Marshal; and Imogen, whom he had noted at once for 'a
+pretty filly,'--as Vivandiere; and holding his top hat between his
+knees, he began to beat it with imaginary drumsticks.  The
+reception accorded to his fantasy was mixed.  All laughed--George
+was licensed; but all felt that the family was being 'rotted'; and
+this seemed to them unnatural, now that it was going to give five
+of its members to the service of the Queen.  George might go too
+far; and there was relief when he got up, offered his arm to Aunt
+Juley, marched up to Timothy, saluted him, kissed his aunt with
+mock passion, said, "Oh! what a treat, dear papa!  Come on,
+Eustace!" and walked out, followed by the grave and fastidious
+Eustace, who had never smiled.
+
+Aunt Juley's bewildered, "Fancy not waiting for the map!  You
+mustn't mind him, Timothy.  He's so droll!" broke the hush, and
+Timothy removed the hand from his mouth.
+
+"I don't know what things are comin' to," he was heard to say.
+"What's all this about goin' out there?  That's not the way to beat
+those Boers."
+
+Francie alone had the hardihood to observe: "What is, then, Uncle
+Timothy?"
+
+"All this new-fangled volunteerin' and expense--lettin' money out
+of the country."
+
+Just then Aunt Hester brought in the map, handling it like a baby
+with eruptions.  With the assistance of Euphemia it was laid on the
+piano, a small Colwood grand, last played on, it was believed, the
+summer before Aunt Ann died, thirteen years ago.  Timothy rose.  He
+walked over to the piano, and stood looking at his map while they
+all gathered round.
+
+"There you are," he said; "that's the position up to date; and very
+poor it is.  H'm!"
+
+"Yes," said Francie, greatly daring, "but how are you going to
+alter it, Uncle Timothy, without more men?"
+
+"Men!" said Timothy; "you don't want men--wastin' the country's
+money.  You want a Napoleon, he'd settle it in a month."
+
+"But if you haven't got him, Uncle Timothy?"
+
+"That's their business," replied Timothy.  "What have we kept the
+Army up for--to eat their heads off in time of peace!  They ought
+to be ashamed of themselves, comin' on the country to help them
+like this!  Let every man stick to his business, and we shall get
+on."
+
+And looking round him, he added almost angrily:
+
+"Volunteerin', indeed!  Throwin' good money after bad!  We must
+save!  Conserve energy that's the only way."  And with a prolonged
+sound, not quite a sniff and not quite a snort, he trod on
+Euphemia's toe, and went out, leaving a sensation and a faint scent
+of barley-sugar behind him.
+
+The effect of something said with conviction by one who has
+evidently made a sacrifice to say it is ever considerable.  And the
+eight Forsytes left behind, all women except young Nicholas, were
+silent for a moment round the map.  Then Francie said:
+
+"Really, I think he's right, you know.  After all, what is the Army
+for?  They ought to have known.  It's only encouraging them."
+
+"My dear!" cried Aunt Juley, "but they've been so progressive.
+Think of their giving up their scarlet.  They were always so proud
+of it.  And now they all look like convicts.  Hester and I were
+saying only yesterday we were sure they must feel it very much.
+Fancy what the Iron Duke would have said!"
+
+"The new colour's very smart," said Winifred; "Val looks quite nice
+in his."
+
+Aunt Juley sighed.
+
+"I do so wonder what Jolyon's boy is like.  To think we've never
+seen him!  His father must be so proud of him."
+
+"His father's in Paris," said Winifred.
+
+Aunt Hester's shoulder was seen to mount suddenly, as if to ward
+off her sister's next remark, for Juley's crumpled cheeks had
+gushed.
+
+"We had dear little Mrs. MacAnder here yesterday, just back from
+Paris.  And whom d'you think she saw there in the street?  You'll
+never guess."
+
+"We shan't try, Auntie," said Euphemia.
+
+"Irene!  Imagine!  After all this time; walking with a fair
+beard...."
+
+"Auntie! you'll kill me!  A fair beard...."
+
+"I was going to say," said Aunt Juley severely, "a fair-bearded
+gentleman.  And not a day older; she was always so pretty," she
+added, with a sort of lingering apology.
+
+"Oh! tell us about her, Auntie," cried Imogen; "I can just remember
+her.  She's the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn't she?  And
+they're such fun."
+
+Aunt Hester sat down.  Really, Juley had done it now!
+
+"She wasn't much of a skeleton as I remember her," murmured
+Euphemia, "extremely well-covered."
+
+"My dear!" said Aunt Juley, "what a peculiar way of putting it--not
+very nice."
+
+"No, but what was she like?" persisted Imogen.
+
+"I'll tell you, my child," said Francie; "a kind of modern Venus,
+very well-dressed."
+
+Euphemia said sharply: "Venus was never dressed, and she had blue
+eyes of melting sapphire."
+
+At this juncture Nicholas took his leave.
+
+"Mrs. Nick is awfully strict," said Francie with a laugh.
+
+"She has six children," said Aunt Juley; "it's very proper she
+should be careful."
+
+"Was Uncle Soames awfully fond of her?" pursued the inexorable
+Imogen, moving her dark luscious eyes from face to face.
+
+Aunt Hester made a gesture of despair, just as Aunt Juley answered:
+
+"Yes, your Uncle Soames was very much attached to her."
+
+"I suppose she ran off with someone?"
+
+"No, certainly not; that is--not precisely.'
+
+"What did she do, then, Auntie?"
+
+"Come along, Imogen," said Winifred, "we must be getting back."
+
+But Aunt Juley interjected resolutely: "She--she didn't behave at
+all well."
+
+"Oh, bother!" cried Imogen; "that's as far as I ever get."
+
+"Well, my dear," said Francie, "she had a love affair which ended
+with the young man's death; and then she left your uncle.  I always
+rather liked her."
+
+"She used to give me chocolates," murmured Imogen, "and smell
+nice."
+
+"Of course!" remarked Euphemia.
+
+"Not of course at all!" replied Francie, who used a particularly
+expensive essence of gillyflower herself.
+
+"I can't think what we are about," said Aunt Juley, raising her
+hands, "talking of such things!"
+
+"Was she divorced?" asked Imogen from the door.
+
+"Certainly not," cried Aunt Juley; "that is--certainly not."
+
+A sound was heard over by the far door.  Timothy had re-entered the
+back drawing-room.  "I've come for my map," he said.  "Who's been
+divorced?"
+
+"No one, Uncle," replied Francie with perfect truth.
+
+Timothy took his map off the piano.
+
+"Don't let's have anything of that sort in the family," he said.
+"All this enlistin's bad enough.  The country's breakin' up; I
+don't know what we're comin' to."  He shook a thick finger at the
+room: "Too many women nowadays, and they don't know what they
+want."
+
+So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went out
+as if afraid of being answered.
+
+The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued murmur,
+out of which emerged Francie's, "Really, the Forsytes!" and Aunt
+Juley's: "He must have his feet in mustard and hot water to-night,
+Hester; will you tell Jane?  The blood has gone to his head again,
+I'm afraid...."
+
+That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after dinner,
+she dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:
+
+"Hester, I can't think where I've heard that dear Soames wants
+Irene to come back to him again.  Who was it told us that George
+had made a funny drawing of him with the words, 'He won't be happy
+till he gets it'?"
+
+"Eustace," answered Aunt Hester from behind The Times; "he had it
+in his pocket, but he wouldn't show it us."
+
+Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating.  The clock ticked, The Times
+crackled, the fire sent forth its rustling purr.  Aunt Juley
+dropped another stitch.
+
+"Hester," she said, "I have had such a dreadful thought."
+
+"Then don't tell me," said Aunt Hester quickly.
+
+"Oh! but I must.  You can't think how dreadful!"  Her voice sank to
+a whisper:
+
+"Jolyon--Jolyon, they say, has a--has a fair beard, now."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+PROGRESS OF THE CHASE
+
+
+Two days after the dinner at James', Mr. Polteed provided Soames
+with food for thought.
+
+"A gentleman," he said, consulting the key concealed in his left
+hand, "47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17 during
+the last month in Paris.  But at present there seems to have been
+nothing very conclusive.  The meetings have all been in public
+places, without concealment--restaurants, the Opera, the Comique,
+the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and so forth.
+She has not yet been traced to his rooms, nor vice versa.  They
+went to Fontainebleau--but nothing of value.  In short, the
+situation is promising, but requires patience."  And, looking up
+suddenly, he added:
+
+"One rather curious point--47 has the same name as--er--31!"
+
+'The fellow knows I'm her husband,' thought Soames.
+
+"Christian name--an odd one--Jolyon," continued Mr. Polteed.  "We
+know his address in Paris and his residence here.  We don't wish,
+of course, to be running a wrong hare."
+
+"Go on with it, but be careful," said Soames doggedly.
+
+Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his
+secret made him all the more reticent.
+
+"Excuse me," said Mr. Polteed, "I'll just see if there's anything
+fresh in."
+
+He returned with some letters.  Relocking the door, he glanced at
+the envelopes.
+
+"Yes, here's a personal one from 19 to myself."
+
+"Well?" said Soames.
+
+ "Um!" said Mr. Polteed, "she says: '47 left for England to-day.
+Address on his baggage: Robin Hill.  Parted from 17 in Louvre
+Gallery at 3.30; nothing very striking.  Thought it best to stay
+and continue observation of 17.  You will deal with 47 in England
+if you think desirable, no doubt.'"  And Mr. Polteed lifted an
+unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing
+material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of
+business.  "Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful make-up.
+Not cheap, but earns her money well.  There's no suspicion of being
+shadowed so far.  But after a time, as you know, sensitive people
+are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything definite to
+go on.  I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and keeping an eye
+on 47.  We can't get at correspondence without great risk.  I
+hardly advise that at this stage.  But you can tell your client
+that it's looking up very well."  And again his narrowed eyes
+gleamed at his taciturn customer.
+
+"No," said Soames suddenly, "I prefer that you should keep the
+watch going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with this
+end."
+
+"Very well," replied Mr. Polteed, "we can do it."
+
+"What--what is the manner between them?"
+
+"I'll read you what she says," said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau
+drawer and taking out a file of papers; "she sums it up somewhere
+confidentially.  Yes, here it is!  '17 very attractive--conclude
+47, longer in the tooth' (slang for age, you know)--'distinctly
+gone--waiting his time--17 perhaps holding off for terms,
+impossible to say without knowing more.  But inclined to think on
+the whole--doesn't know her mind--likely to act on impulse some
+day.  Both have style.'"
+
+"What does that mean?" said Soames between close lips.
+
+"Well," murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white
+teeth, "an expression we use.  In other words, it's not likely to
+be a weekend business--they'll come together seriously or not at
+all."
+
+"H'm!" muttered Soames, "that's all, is it?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Polteed, "but quite promising."
+
+'Spider!' thought Soames.  "Good-day!"
+
+He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria
+Station and take the Underground into the City.  For so late in
+January it was warm; sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the
+frosty grass--an illumined cobweb of a day.
+
+Little spiders--and great spiders!  And the greatest spinner of
+all, his own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads
+round any clear way out.  What was that fellow hanging round Irene
+for?  Was it really as Polteed suggested?  Or was Jolyon but taking
+compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it--sentimental
+radical chap that he had always been?  If it were, indeed, as
+Polteed hinted!  Soames stood still.  It could not be!  The fellow
+was seven years older than himself, no better looking!  No richer!
+What attraction had he?
+
+'Besides, he's come back,' he thought; 'that doesn't look---I'll go
+and see him!' and, taking out a card, he wrote:
+
+"If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall be
+at the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could come to
+the Hotch Potch if you prefer it.  I want to see you.--S. F."
+
+He walked up St.  James's Street and confided it to the porter at
+the Hotch Potch.
+
+"Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in," he said, and
+took one of the new motor cabs into the City....
+
+Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face
+towards the Connoisseurs.  What did Soames want now?  Had he got
+wind of Paris?  And stepping across St. James's Street, he
+determined to make no secret of his visit.  'But it won't do,' he
+thought, 'to let him know she's there, unless he knows already.'
+In this complicated state of mind he was conducted to where Soames
+was drinking tea in a small bay-window.
+
+"No tea, thanks," said Jolyon, "but I'll go on smoking if I may."
+
+The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were
+lighted; the two cousins sat waiting on each other.
+
+"You've been in Paris, I hear," said Soames at last.
+
+"Yes; just back."
+
+"Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?" Jolyon
+nodded.
+
+"You didn't happen to see Irene, I suppose.  It appears she's
+abroad somewhere."
+
+Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: "Yes, I saw
+her."
+
+"How was she?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his chair.
+
+"When I saw you last," he said, "I was in two minds.  We talked,
+and you expressed your opinion.  I don't wish to reopen that
+discussion.  I only wanted to say this: My position with her is
+extremely difficult.  I don't want you to go using your influence
+against me.  What happened is a very long time ago.  I'm going to
+ask her to let bygones be bygones."
+
+"You have asked her, you know," murmured Jolyon.
+
+"The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock.  But the more
+she thinks of it, the more she must see that it's the only way out
+for both of us."
+
+"That's not my impression of her state of mind," said Jolyon with
+particular calm.  "And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the
+matter if you think reason comes into it at all."
+
+He saw his cousin's pale face grow paler--he had used, without
+knowing it, Irene's own words.
+
+"Thanks," muttered Soames, "but I see things perhaps more plainly
+than you think.  I only want to be sure that you won't try to
+influence her against me."
+
+"I don't know what makes you think I have any influence," said
+Jolyon; "but if I have I'm bound to use it in the direction of what
+I think is her happiness.  I am what they call a 'feminist,' I
+believe."
+
+"Feminist!" repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time.  "Does
+that mean that you're against me?"
+
+"Bluntly," said Jolyon, "I'm against any woman living with any man
+whom she definitely dislikes.  It appears to me rotten."
+
+"And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into her
+mind."
+
+"I am not likely to be seeing her."
+
+"Not going back to Paris?"
+
+"Not so far as I know," said Jolyon, conscious of the intent
+watchfulness in Soames' face.
+
+"Well, that's all I had to say.  Anyone who comes between man and
+wife, you know, incurs heavy responsibility."
+
+Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved
+away, leaving Soames staring after him.  'We Forsytes,' thought
+Jolyon, hailing a cab, 'are very civilised.  With simpler folk that
+might have come to a row.  If it weren't for my boy going to the
+war....'  The war!  A gust of his old doubt swept over him.  A
+precious war!  Domination of peoples or of women!  Attempts to
+master and possess those who did not want you!  The negation of
+gentle decency!  Possession, vested rights; and anyone 'agin' 'em--
+outcast!  'Thank Heaven!'  he thought, 'I always felt "agin" 'em,
+anyway!'  Yes!  Even before his first disastrous marriage he could
+remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial
+suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed.  Parsons
+would have it that freedom of soul and body were quite different
+things!  Pernicious doctrine!  Body and soul could not thus be
+separated.  Free will was the strength of any tie, and not its
+weakness.  'I ought to have told Soames,' he thought, 'that I think
+him comic.  Ah! but he's tragic, too!'  Was there anything,
+indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own
+possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even enter
+fully into what another person felt!  'I must write and warn her,'
+he thought; 'he's going to have another try.'  And all the way home
+to Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son
+which prevented him from posting back to Paris....
+
+But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing
+ache--a jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this
+fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of
+resistance to his way out.  'Does that mean that you're against
+me?' he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question.
+Feminist!  Phrasey fellow!  'I mustn't rush things,' he thought.
+'I have some breathing space; he's not going back to Paris, unless
+he was lying.  I'll let the spring come!'  Though how the spring
+could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell.
+And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from
+pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: 'Nothing
+seems any good--nothing seems worth while.  I'm loney--that's the
+trouble.'
+
+He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark
+street below a church--passing, turning her neck so that he caught
+the gleam of her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark
+hat, which had gold spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind.
+He opened his eyes--so vividly he had seen her!  A woman was
+passing below, but not she!  Oh no, there was nothing there!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+'HERE WE ARE AGAIN!'
+
+
+Imogen's frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her
+mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of
+March.  With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection.  It
+took her mind off the slowly approaching rite which would give her
+a freedom but doubtfully desired; took her mind, too, off her boy
+and his fast approaching departure for a war from which the news
+remained disquieting.  Like bees busy on summer flowers, or bright
+gadflies hovering and darting over spiky autumn blossoms, she and
+her 'little daughter,' tall nearly as herself and with a bust
+measurement not far inferior, hovered in the shops of Regent
+Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond Street,
+lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics.  Dozens of young
+women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before
+Winifred and Imogen, draped in 'creations.'  The models--'Very new,
+modom; quite the latest thing--' which those two reluctantly turned
+down, would have filled a museum; the models which they were
+obliged to have nearly emptied James' bank.  It was no good doing
+things by halves, Winifred felt, in view of the need for making
+this first and sole untarnished season a conspicuous success.
+Their patience in trying the patience of those impersonal creatures
+who swam about before them could alone have been displayed by such
+as were moved by faith.  It was for Winifred a long prostration
+before her dear goddess Fashion, fervent as a Catholic might make
+before the Virgin; for Imogen an experience by no means too
+unpleasant--she often looked so nice, and flattery was implicit
+everywhere: in a word it was 'amusing.'
+
+On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted
+Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and
+Baker's, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with cream,
+turned homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening touched with
+spring.  Opening the door--freshly painted a light olive-green;
+nothing neglected that year to give Imogen a good send-off--
+Winifred passed towards the silver basket to see if anyone had
+called, and suddenly her nostrils twitched.  What was that scent?
+
+Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood
+absorbed.  Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her
+breast, Winifred said:
+
+"Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner."
+
+Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs.  Winifred heard the
+door of her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath.  Was
+it spring tickling her senses--whipping up nostalgia for her
+'clown,' against all wisdom and outraged virtue?  A male scent!  A
+faint reek of cigars and lavender-water not smelt since that early
+autumn night six months ago, when she had called him 'the limit.'
+Whence came it, or was it ghost of scent--sheer emanation from
+memory?  She looked round her.  Nothing--not a thing, no tiniest
+disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom.  A little day-dream
+of a scent--illusory, saddening, silly!  In the silver basket were
+new cards, two with 'Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,' and one with 'Mr.
+Polegate Thom' thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled severe.
+'I must be tired,' she thought, 'I'll go and lie down.'  Upstairs
+the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it
+evening light; and she passed on up to her bedroom.  This, too, was
+half-curtained and dim, for it was six o'clock.  Winifred threw off
+her coat--that scent again!--then stood, as if shot, transfixed
+against the bed-rail.  Something dark had risen from the sofa in
+the far corner.  A word of horror--in her family--escaped her:
+"God!"
+
+"It's I--Monty," said a voice.
+
+Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch
+of the light hanging above her dressing-table.  He appeared just on
+the rim of the light's circumference, emblazoned from the absence
+of his watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown, but--yes!--
+split at the toecap.  His chest and face were shadowy.  Surely he
+was thin--or was it a trick of the light?  He advanced, lighted now
+from toe-cap to the top of his dark head--surely a little grizzled!
+His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost
+boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know
+about his face.  There was no pin in his tie.  His suit--ah!--she
+knew that--but how unpressed, unglossy!  She stared again at the
+toe-cap of his boot.  Something big and relentless had been 'at
+him,' had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him.  And she
+stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the
+toe.
+
+"Well!" he said, "I got the order.  I'm back."
+
+Winifred's bosom began to heave.  The nostalgia for her husband
+which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper
+jealousy than any she had felt yet.  There he was--a dark, and as
+if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self!  What force had
+done this to him--squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind!
+That woman!
+
+"I'm back," he said again.  "I've had a beastly time.  By God!  I
+came steerage.  I've got nothing but what I stand up in, and that
+bag."
+
+"And who has the rest?" cried Winifred, suddenly alive.  "How dared
+you come?  You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order
+to come back.  Don't touch me!"
+
+They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so
+many years of nights together.  Many times, yes--many times she had
+wanted him back.  But now that he had come she was filled with this
+cold and deadly resentment.  He put his hand up to his moustache;
+but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar way, he just
+pulled it downwards.
+
+"Gad!" he said: "If you knew the time I've had!"
+
+"I'm glad I don't!"
+
+"Are the kids all right?"
+
+Winifred nodded.  "How did you get in?"
+
+"With my key."
+
+"Then the maids don't know.  You can't stay here, Monty."
+
+He uttered a little sardonic laugh.
+
+"Where then?"
+
+"Anywhere."
+
+"Well, look at me!  That--that damned...."
+
+"If you mention her," cried Winifred, "I go straight out to Park
+Lane and I don't come back."
+
+Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it
+moved her.  He shut his eyes.  It was as if he had said: 'All
+right!  I'm dead to the world!'
+
+"You can have a room for the night," she said; "your things are
+still here.  Only Imogen is at home."
+
+He leaned back against the bed-rail.  "Well, it's in your hands,"
+and his own made a writhing movement.  "I've been through it.  You
+needn't hit too hard--it isn't worth while.  I've been frightened;
+I've been frightened, Freddie."
+
+That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver
+through Winifred.
+
+'What am I to do with him?' she thought.  'What in God's name am I
+to do with him?'
+
+"Got a cigarette?"
+
+She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she
+couldn't sleep at night, and lighted it.  With that action the
+matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.
+
+"Go and have a hot bath.  I'll put some clothes out for you in the
+dressing-room.  We can talk later."
+
+He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her--they looked half-dead, or was
+it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?
+
+'He's not the same,' she thought.  He would never be quite the same
+again!  But what would he be?
+
+"All right!"  he said, and went towards the door.  He even moved
+differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it
+is worth while to move at all.
+
+When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she
+put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room,
+then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky.
+Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment at the bathroom
+door, she went down and out.  In the street she hesitated.  Past
+seven o'clock!  Would Soames be at his Club or at Park Lane?  She
+turned towards the latter.  Back!
+
+Soames had always feared it--she had sometimes hoped it....  Back!
+So like him--clown that he was--with this: 'Here we are again!' to
+make fools of them all--of the Law, of Soames, of herself!
+
+Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging
+over her and the children!  What a relief!  Ah! but how to accept
+his return?  That 'woman' had ravaged him, taken from him passion
+such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not
+thought him capable of.  There was the sting!  That selfish,
+blatant 'clown' of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred,
+had been swept and ungarnished by another woman!  Insulting!  Too
+insulting!  Not right, not decent to take him back!  And yet she
+had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now!  He was as
+much her husband as ever--she had put herself out of court!  And
+all he wanted, no doubt, was money--to keep him in cigars and
+lavender-water!  That scent!  'After all, I'm not old,' she
+thought, 'not old yet!'  But that woman who had reduced him to
+those words: 'I've been through it.  I've been frightened--
+frightened, Freddie!'  She neared her father's house, driven this
+way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing
+her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be
+held against a robbing world.  And so she came to James'.
+
+"Mr. Soames?  In his room?  I'll go up; don't say I'm here."
+
+Her brother was dressing.  She found him before a mirror, tying a
+black bow with an air of despising its ends.
+
+"Hullo!" he said, contemplating her in the glass; "what's wrong?"
+
+"Monty!" said Winifred stonily.
+
+Soames spun round.  "What!"
+
+"Back!"
+
+"Hoist," muttered Soames, "with our own petard.  Why the deuce
+didn't you let me try cruelty?  I always knew it was too much risk
+this way."
+
+"Oh! Don't talk about that!  What shall I do?"
+
+Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.
+
+"Well?" said Winifred impatiently.
+
+"What has he to say for himself?"
+
+"Nothing.  One of his boots is split across the toe."
+
+Soames stared at her.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "of course!  On his beam ends.  So--it begins again!
+This'll about finish father."
+
+"Can't we keep it from him?"
+
+"Impossible.  He has an uncanny flair for anything that's
+worrying."
+
+And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces.
+"There ought to be some way in law," he muttered, "to make him
+safe."
+
+"No," cried Winifred, "I won't be made a fool of again; I'd sooner
+put up with him."
+
+The two stared at each other.  Their hearts were full of feeling,
+but they could give it no expression--Forsytes that they were.
+
+"Where did you leave him?"
+
+"In the bath," and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh.  "The only
+thing he's brought back is lavender-water."
+
+"Steady!" said Soames, "you're thoroughly upset.  I'll go back with
+you."
+
+"What's the use?"
+
+"We ought to make terms with him."
+
+"Terms!  It'll always be the same.  When he recovers--cards and
+betting, drink and ....!"  She was silent, remembering the look on
+her husband's face.  The burnt child--the burnt child.  Perhaps...!
+
+"Recovers?" replied Soames: "Is he ill?"
+
+"No; burnt out; that's all."
+
+Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his
+coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau-de-
+Cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: "We haven't any luck."
+
+And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as
+if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own.
+
+"I'd like to see mother," she said.
+
+"She'll be with father in their room.  Come down quietly to the
+study.  I'll get her."
+
+Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable
+for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine
+collection of Law Reports unopened for many years.  Here she stood,
+with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at
+the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by Soames.
+
+"Oh! my poor dear!" said Emily: "How miserable you look in here!
+This is too bad of him, really!"
+
+As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of
+all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give
+her daughter a good hug.  But there was comfort in her cushioned
+voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace.
+Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred
+said in her most off-hand voice:
+
+"It's all right, Mother; no good fussing."
+
+"I don't see," said Emily, looking at Soames, "why Winifred
+shouldn't tell him that she'll prosecute him if he doesn't keep off
+the premises.  He took her pearls; and if he's not brought them
+back, that's quite enough."
+
+Winifred smiled.  They would all plunge about with suggestions of
+this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and
+that was--nothing.  The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort
+of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground
+in her.  No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home
+without the world knowing.
+
+" Well," said Emily, "come into the diningroom comfortably--you
+must stay and have dinner with us.  Leave it to me to tell your
+father."  And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out
+the light.  Not till then did they see the disaster in the
+corridor.
+
+There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was
+standing with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him, so
+that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut off
+from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert.
+He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if he saw
+before him a frog too large to swallow.
+
+"What's all this?" he said.  "Tell your father?  You never tell me
+anything."
+
+The moment found Emily without reply.  It was Winifred who went up
+to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms,
+said:
+
+"Monty's not gone bankrupt, Father.  He's only come back."
+
+They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad
+she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth
+of root in that shadowy old Forsyte.  Something wry occurred about
+his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long
+silvery whiskers.  Then he said with a sort of dignity: "He'll be
+the death of me.  I knew how it would be."
+
+"You mustn't worry, Father," said Winifred calmly.  "I mean to make
+him behave."
+
+"Ah!" said James.  "Here, take this thing off, I'm hot."  They
+unwound the shawl.  He turned, and walked firmly to the dining-
+room.
+
+"I don't want any soup," he said to Warmson, and sat down in his
+chair.  They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while
+Warmson laid the fourth place.  When he left the room, James said:
+"What's he brought back?"
+
+"Nothing, Father."
+
+James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon.
+"Divorce!" he muttered; "rubbish!  What was I about?  I ought to
+have paid him an allowance to stay out of England.  Soames you go
+and propose it to him."
+
+It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was
+surprised when she said: "No, I'll keep him now he's back; he must
+just behave--that's all."
+
+They all looked at her.  It had always been known that Winifred had
+pluck.
+
+"Out there!" said James elliptically, "who knows what cut-throats!
+You look for his revolver!  Don't go to bed without.  You ought to
+have Warmson to sleep in the house.  I'll see him myself tomorrow."
+
+They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably:
+"That's right, James, we won't have any nonsense."
+
+"Ah!" muttered James darkly, "I can't tell."
+
+The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.
+
+When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father
+good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress
+that she put all the comfort she could into her voice.
+
+"It's all right, Daddy, dear; don't worry.  I shan't need anyone--
+he's quite bland.  I shall only be upset if you worry.  Good-night,
+bless you!"
+
+James repeated the words, "Bless you!" as if he did not quite know
+what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.
+
+She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.
+
+Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed
+in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his
+head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.
+
+Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes
+after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood--
+parched, yet rested by the sun's retreat.  It was as if a little
+dew had come already on her burnt-up husband.
+
+He said apathetically: "I suppose you've been to Park Lane.  How's
+the old man?"
+
+Winifred could not help the bitter answer: "Not dead."
+
+He winced, actually he winced.
+
+"Understand, Monty," she said, "I will not have him worried.  If
+you aren't going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go
+anywhere.  Have you had dinner?"
+
+No.
+
+"Would you like some?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Imogen offered me some.  I didn't want any."
+
+Imogen!  In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.
+
+"So you've seen her?  What did she say?"
+
+"She gave me a kiss."
+
+With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed.
+'Yes!' she thought, 'he cares for her, not for me a bit.'
+
+Dartie's eyes were moving from side to side.
+
+"Does she know about me?" he said.
+
+It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed.
+He minded their knowing!
+
+"No.  Val knows.  The others don't; they only know you went away."
+
+She heard him sigh with relief.
+
+"But they shall know," she said firmly, "if you give me cause."
+
+"All right!" he muttered, "hit me!  I'm down!"
+
+Winifred went up to the bed.  "Look here, Monty!  I don't want to
+hit you.  I don't want to hurt you.  I shan't allude to anything.
+I'm not going to worry.  What's the use?" She was silent a moment.
+"I can't stand any more, though, and I won't!  You'd better know.
+You've made me suffer.  But I used to be fond of you.  For the sake
+of that...."  She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with
+the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand
+suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room.
+
+She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings,
+thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the
+bed in the other room; resolutely not 'worrying,' but gnawed by
+jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just
+visited by pity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+OUTLANDISH NIGHT
+
+
+Soames doggedly let the spring come--no easy task for one conscious
+that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no
+issue from the web anywhere visible.  Mr. Polteed reported nothing,
+except that his watch went on--costing a lot of money.  Val and his
+cousin were gone to the war, whence came news more favourable;
+Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had retained his health;
+business prospered almost terribly--there was nothing to worry
+Soames except that he was 'held up,' could make no step in any
+direction.
+
+He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them
+think that he had 'piped off,' as James would have put it--he might
+want to 'pipe on' again at any minute.  But he had to be so
+restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the
+Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the
+purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of having
+been possessively irregular.
+
+He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most
+amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing,
+jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses
+and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage
+of idiocy, as it seemed to him.  Mafeking!  Of course, it had been
+relieved!  Good!  But was that an excuse?  Who were these people,
+what were they, where had they come from into the West End?  His
+face was tickled, his ears whistled into.  Girls cried: 'Keep your
+hair on, stucco!'  A youth so knocked off his top-hat that he
+recovered it with difficulty.  Crackers were exploding beneath his
+nose, between his feet.  He was bewildered, exasperated, offended.
+This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse had
+unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters of whose existence he had
+heard, perhaps, but believed in never.  This, then, was the
+populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and
+Forsyteism.  This was--egad!--Democracy!  It stank, yelled, was
+hideous!  In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps--but here in
+Regent Street, in Piccadilly!  What were the police about!  In
+1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the
+cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly
+believe his scorching eyes.  The whole thing was unspeakable!
+These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny; such
+swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing--and what laughter!
+
+Nothing sacred to them!  He shouldn't be surprised if they began to
+break windows.  In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter
+which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing
+dervish of a crowd was swarming.  From the Club windows his own
+kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement.  They
+didn't realise!  Why, this was serious--might come to anything!
+The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in different
+mood!  He remembered there had been a mob in the late eighties,
+when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and made speeches.
+But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise.  They were hysterical
+--it wasn't English!  And all about the relief of a little town as
+big as--Watford, six thousand miles away.  Restraint, reserve!
+Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those
+indispensable attributes of property and culture, where were they?
+It wasn't English!  No, it wasn't English!  So Soames brooded,
+threading his way on.  It was as if he had suddenly caught sight of
+someone cutting the covenant 'for quiet possession' out of his
+legal documents; or of a monster lurking and stalking out in the
+future, casting its shadow before.  Their want of stolidity, their
+want of reverence!  It was like discovering that nine-tenths of the
+people of England were foreigners.  And if that were so--then,
+anything might happen!
+
+At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt from
+racing, holding a false nose in his hand.
+
+"Hallo, Soames!" he said, "have a nose!"
+
+Soames responded with a pale smile.
+
+"Got this from one of these sportsmen," went on George, who had
+evidently been dining; "had to lay him out--for trying to bash my
+hat.  I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps,
+they're getting so damned cheeky--all radicals and socialists.
+They want our goods.  You tell Uncle James that, it'll make him
+sleep."
+
+'In vino veritas,' thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed
+on up Hamilton Place.  There was but a trickle of roysterers in
+Park Lane, not very noisy.  And looking up at the houses he
+thought: 'After all, we're the backbone of the country.  They won't
+upset us easily.  Possession's nine points of the law.'
+
+But, as he closed the door of his father's house behind him, all
+that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his
+mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had awakened
+in the warm clean morning comfort of his spring-mattressed bed.
+
+Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood
+still.
+
+A wife!  Somebody to talk things over with.  One had a right!  Damn
+it!  One had a right!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOAMES IN PARIS
+
+
+Soames had travelled little.  Aged nineteen he had made the 'petty
+tour' with his father, mother, and Winifred--Brussels, the Rhine,
+Switzerland, and home by way of Paris.  Aged twenty-seven, just
+when he began to take interest in pictures, he had spent five hot
+weeks in Italy, looking into the Renaissance--not so much in it as
+he had been led to expect--and a fortnight in Paris on his way
+back, looking into himself, as became a Forsyte surrounded by
+people so strongly self-centred and 'foreign' as the French.  His
+knowledge of their language being derived from his public school,
+he did not understand them when they spoke.  Silence he had found
+better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself.  He had
+disliked the look of the men's clothes, the closed-in cabs, the
+theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which smelled
+of beeswax.  He was too cautious and too shy to explore that side
+of Paris supposed by Forsytes to constitute its attraction under
+the rose; and as for a collector's bargain--not one to be had!  As
+Nicholas might have put it--they were a grasping lot.  He had come
+back uneasy, saying Paris was overrated.
+
+When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his
+third attempt on the centre of civilisation.  This time, however,
+the mountain was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply
+civilised than Paris, and perhaps he really was.  Moreover, he had
+a definite objective.  This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of
+taste and immorality, but the prosecution of his own legitimate
+affairs.  He went, indeed, because things were getting past a joke.
+The watch went on and on, and--nothing--nothing!  Jolyon had never
+returned to Paris, and no one else was 'suspect!'  Busy with new
+and very confidential matters, Soames was realising more than ever
+how essential reputation is to a solicitor.  But at night and in
+his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought that time was
+always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as much 'in
+irons' as ever.  Since Mafeking night he had become aware that a
+'young fool of a doctor' was hanging round Annette.  Twice he had
+come across him--a cheerful young fool, not more than thirty.
+
+Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness--an indecent,
+extravagant sort of quality, which had no relation to facts.  The
+mixture of his desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture;
+and lately the thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she
+was being shadowed: It was this which finally decided him to go and
+see for himself; to go and once more try to break down her
+repugnance, her refusal to make her own and his path comparatively
+smooth once more.  If he failed again--well, he would see what she
+did with herself, anyway!
+
+He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to
+Forsytes, where practically nobody spoke French.  He had formed no
+plan.  He did not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she
+had no chance to evade him by flight.  And next morning he set out
+in bright weather.
+
+Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which
+almost annoyed Soames.  He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a
+little sideways in real curiosity.  He desired now to understand
+things French.  Was not Annette French?  There was much to be got
+out of his visit, if he could only get it.  In this laudable mood
+and the Place de la Concorde he was nearly run down three times.
+He came on the 'Cours la Reine,' where Irene's hotel was situated,
+almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed on his procedure.
+Crossing over to the river side, he noted the building, white and
+cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen through a screen of
+plane-tree leaves.  And, conscious that it would be far better to
+meet her casually in some open place than to risk a call, he sat
+down on a bench whence he could watch the entrance.  It was not
+quite eleven o'clock, and improbable that she had yet gone out.
+Some pigeons were strutting and preening their feathers in the
+pools of sunlight between the shadows of the plane-trees.  A
+workman in a blue blouse passed, and threw them crumbs from the
+paper which contained his dinner.  A 'bonne' coiffed with ribbon
+shepherded two little girls with pig-tails and frilled drawers.  A
+cab meandered by, whose cocher wore a blue coat and a black-glazed
+hat.  To Soames a kind of affectation seemed to cling about it all,
+a sort of picturesqueness which was out of date.  A theatrical
+people, the French!  He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a
+sense of injury that Fate should be casting his life into out-
+landish waters.  He shouldn't wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this
+foreign life; she had never been properly English--even to look at!
+And he began considering which of those windows could be hers under
+the green sunblinds.  How could he word what he had come to say so
+that it might pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy?  He threw
+the fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: 'I
+can't stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs.  Better give it up
+and call on her in the late afternoon.'  But he still sat on, heard
+twelve strike, and then half-past.  'I'll wait till one,' he
+thought, 'while I'm about it.'  But just then he started up, and
+shrinkingly sat down again.  A woman had come out in a cream-
+coloured frock, and was moving away under a fawn-coloured parasol.
+Irene herself!  He waited till she was too far away to recognise
+him, then set out after her.  She was strolling as though she had
+no particular objective; moving, if he remembered rightly, toward
+the Bois de Boulogne.  For half an hour at least he kept his
+distance on the far side of the way till she had passed into the
+Bois itself.  Was she going to meet someone after all?  Some
+confounded Frenchman--one of those 'Bel Ami' chaps, perhaps, who
+had nothing to do but hang about women--for he had read that book
+with difficulty and a sort of disgusted fascination.  He followed
+doggedly along a shady alley, losing sight of her now and then when
+the path curved.  And it came back to him how, long ago, one night
+in Hyde Park he had slid and sneaked from tree to tree, from seat
+to seat, hunting blindly, ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her
+and young Bosinney.  The path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came
+on her sitting in front of a small fountain--a little green-bronze
+Niobe veiled in hair to her slender hips, gazing at the pool she
+had wept: He came on her so suddenly that he was past before he
+could turn and take off his hat.  She did not start up.  She had
+always had great self-command--it was one of the things he most
+admired in her, one of his greatest grievances against her, because
+he had never been able to tell what she was thinking.  Had she
+realised that he was following?  Her self-possession made him
+angry; and, disdaining to explain his presence, he pointed to the
+mournful little Niobe, and said:
+
+"That's rather a good thing."
+
+He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her
+composure.
+
+"I didn't want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A little lonely."  As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to
+look at the fountain and passed on.
+
+Irene's eyes followed her.
+
+"No," she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, "never
+lonely.  One has always one's shadow."
+
+Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, it's your own fault.  You can be free of it at any moment.
+Irene, come back to me, and be free."
+
+Irene laughed.
+
+"Don't!" cried Soames, stamping his foot; "it's inhuman.  Listen!
+Is there any condition I can make which will bring you back to me?
+If I promise you a separate house--and just a visit now and then?"
+
+Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.
+
+"None!  None!  None!  You may hunt me to the grave.  I will not
+come."
+
+Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.
+
+"Don't make a scene!" he said sharply.  And they both stood
+motionless, staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the
+sunlight was burnishing.
+
+"That's your last word, then," muttered Soames, clenching his
+hands; "you condemn us both."
+
+Irene bent her head.  "I can't come back.  Good-bye!"
+
+A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.
+
+"Stop!" he said, "and listen to me a moment.  You gave me a sacred
+vow--you came to me without a penny.  You had all I could give you.
+You broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you
+refused me a child; you've left me in prison; you--you still move
+me so that I want you--I want you.  Well, what do you think of
+yourself?"
+
+Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.
+
+"God made me as I am," she said; "wicked if you like--but not so
+wicked that I'll give myself again to a man I hate."
+
+The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to
+lay a caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.
+
+Soames could neither speak nor move.  That word 'hate'--so extreme,
+so primitive--made all the Forsyte in him tremble.  With a deep
+imprecation he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran
+almost into the arms of the lady sauntering back--the fool, the
+shadowing fool!
+
+He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the Bois.
+
+'Well,' he thought, 'I need have no consideration for her now; she
+has not a grain of it for me.  I'll show her this very day that
+she's my wife still.'
+
+But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion
+that he did not know what he meant.  One could not make scenes in
+public, and short of scenes in public what was there he could do?
+He almost cursed his own thin-skinnedness.  She might deserve no
+consideration; but he--alas! deserved some at his own hands.  And
+sitting lunchless in the hall of his hotel, with tourists passing
+every moment, Baedeker in hand, he was visited by black dejection.
+In irons!  His whole life, with every natural instinct and every
+decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all because Fate had
+driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon this woman--so
+utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set on any other!
+Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for seeing in her
+anything but the cruel Venus she was!  And yet, still seeing her
+with the sunlight on the clinging China crepe of her gown, he
+uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was passing, thought:
+'Man in pain!  Let's see! what did I have for lunch?'
+
+Later, in front of a cafe near the Opera, over a glass of cold tea
+with lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious resolution to
+go and dine at her hotel.  If she were there, he would speak to
+her; if she were not, he would leave a note.  He dressed carefully,
+and wrote as follows:
+
+"Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all
+events.  If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone
+unturned to make things unbearable for him.  'S. F.'"
+
+He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the
+maiden name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word
+Forsyte on the envelope lest she should tear it up unread.  Then he
+went out, and made his way through the glowing streets, abandoned
+to evening pleasure-seekers.  Entering her hotel, he took his seat
+in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could see all
+entrances and exits.  She was not there.  He ate little, quickly,
+watchfully.  She did not come.  He lingered in the lounge over his
+coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy.  But still she did not come.
+He went over to the keyboard and examined the names.  Number
+twelve, on the first floor!  And he determined to take the note up
+himself.  He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little salon;
+eight-ten-twelve!  Should he knock, push the note under, or....?
+He looked furtively round and turned the handle.  The door opened,
+but into a little space leading to another door; he knocked on
+that--no answer.  The door was locked.  It fitted very closely to
+the floor; the note would not go under.  He thrust it back into his
+pocket, and stood a moment listening.  He felt somehow certain that
+she was not there.  And suddenly he came away, passing the little
+salon down the stairs.  He stopped at the bureau and said:
+
+"Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?"
+
+"Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur--suddenly, about three o'clock.
+There was illness in her family."
+
+Soames compressed his lips.  "Oh!" he said; "do you know her
+address?"
+
+"Non, Monsieur.  England, I think."
+
+Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out.  He hailed
+an open horse-cab which was passing.
+
+"Drive me anywhere!"
+
+The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved his
+whip.  And Soames was borne along in that little yellow-wheeled
+Victoria all over star-shaped Paris, with here and there a pause,
+and the question, "C'est par ici, Monsieur?" "No, go on," till the
+man gave it up in despair, and the yellow-wheeled chariot continued
+to roll between the tall, flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-
+tree avenues--a little Flying Dutchman of a cab.
+
+'Like my life,' thought Soames, 'without object, on and on!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN THE WEB
+
+
+Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third
+morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and
+carried a brown billycock hat.  Soames motioned him to a seat.
+
+"The news from the war is not so bad, is it?" said Mr. Polteed.  "I
+hope I see you well, sir."
+
+"Thanks! quite."
+
+Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into
+it, and said softly:
+
+"I think we've done your business for you at last."
+
+"What?" ejaculated Soames.
+
+"Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be justified
+in calling conclusive evidence," and Mr. Polteed paused.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17 and
+a party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him coming
+out of her bedroom in the hotel about ten o'clock in the evening.
+With a little care in the giving of the evidence that will be
+enough, especially as 17 has left Paris--no doubt with the party in
+question.  In fact, they both slipped off, and we haven't got on to
+them again, yet; but we shall--we shall.  She's worked hard under
+very difficult circumstances, and I'm glad she's brought it off at
+last."  Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette, tapped its end against
+the table, looked at Soames, and put it back.  The expression on
+his client's face was not encouraging.
+
+"Who is this new person?" said Soames abruptly.
+
+"That we don't know.  She'll swear to the fact, and she's got his
+appearance pat."
+
+Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:
+
+"'Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening
+dress at night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat cheeks,
+good chin, grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....'"
+
+Soames rose and went to the window.  He stood there in sardonic
+fury.  Congenital idiot--spidery congenital idiot!  Seven months at
+fifteen pounds a week--to be tracked down as his own wife's lover!
+Guilty look!  He threw the window open.
+
+"It's hot," he said, and came back to his seat.
+
+Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.
+
+"I doubt if that's quite good enough," he said, drawling the words,
+"with no name or address.  I think you may let that lady have a
+rest, and take up our friend 47 at this end."  Whether Polteed had
+spotted him he could not tell; but he had a mental vision of him in
+the midst of his cronies dissolved in inextinguishable laughter.
+'Guilty look!'  Damnation!
+
+Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: "I assure
+you we have put it through sometimes on less than that.  It's
+Paris, you know.  Attractive woman living alone.  Why not risk it,
+sir?  We might screw it up a peg."
+
+Soames had sudden insight.  The fellow's professional zeal was
+stirred: 'Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce
+through a visit to his own wife's bedroom!  Something to talk of
+there, when I retire!'  And for one wild moment he thought: 'Why
+not?'  After all, hundreds of men of medium height had small feet
+and a guilty look!
+
+"I'm not authorised to take any risk!" he said shortly.
+
+Mr. Polteed looked up.
+
+"Pity," he said, "quite a pity!  That other affair seemed very
+costive."
+
+Soames rose.
+
+"Never mind that.  Please watch 47, and take care not to find a
+mare's nest.  Good-morning!"
+
+Mr. Polteed's eye glinted at the words 'mare's nest!'
+
+"Very good.  You shall be kept informed."
+
+And Soames was alone again.  The spidery, dirty, ridiculous
+business!  Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on
+them.  Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk
+roused him with the draft prospectus of a new issue of shares, very
+desirable, in Manifold and Topping's.  That afternoon he left work
+early and made his way to the Restaurant Bretagne.  Only Madame
+Lamotte was in.  Would Monsieur have tea with her?
+
+Soames bowed.
+
+When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little
+room, he said abruptly
+
+"I want a talk with you, Madame."
+
+The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long
+expected such words.
+
+"I have to ask you something first: That young doctor--what's his
+name?  Is there anything between him and Annette?"
+
+Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet--clear-cut,
+black, hard, shining.
+
+"Annette is young," she said; "so is monsieur le docteur.  Between
+young people things move quickly; but Annette is a good daughter.
+Ah! what a jewel of a nature!"
+
+The least little smile twisted Soames' lips.
+
+"Nothing definite, then?"
+
+"But definite--no, indeed!  The young man is veree nice, but--what
+would you?  There is no money at present."
+
+She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same.
+Their eyes met.
+
+"I am a married man," he said, "living apart from my wife for many
+years.  I am seeking to divorce her."
+
+Madame Lamotte put down her cup.  Indeed!  What tragic things there
+were!  The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer
+species of contempt in Soames.
+
+"I am a rich man," he added, fully conscious that the remark was
+not in good taste.  "It is useless to say more at present, but I
+think you understand."
+
+Madame's eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked at
+him very straight.
+
+"Ah! ca--mais nous avons le temps!" was all she said.  "Another
+little cup?" Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked
+westward.
+
+He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit
+herself with that cheerful young ass until....!  But what chance of
+his ever being able to say: 'I'm free.'  What chance?  The future
+had lost all semblance of reality.  He felt like a fly, entangled
+in cobweb filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air with
+pitiful eyes.
+
+He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens,
+and down Queen's Gate towards Chelsea.  Perhaps she had gone back
+to her flat.  That at all events he could find out.  For since that
+last and most ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had
+taken refuge again in the feeling that she must have a lover.  He
+arrived before the little Mansions at the dinner-hour.  No need to
+enquire!  A grey-haired lady was watering the flower-boxes in her
+window.  It was evidently let.  And he walked slowly past again,
+along the river--an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony and
+comfort, except within his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+RICHMOND PARK
+
+
+On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was
+received by Jolyon at Robin Hill:
+
+"Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again."
+
+It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure
+of June, whose berth was booked for the following day.  She was,
+indeed, in the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to her
+father's care when the message arrived.
+
+The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus of
+Jolly's enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation
+and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails their
+individual liberties.  Enthusiastic at first about the
+'wonderfulness' of the work, she had begun after a month to feel
+that she could train herself so much better than others could train
+her.  And if Holly had not insisted on following her example, and
+being trained too, she must inevitably have 'cried off.'  The
+departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April had further
+stiffened her failing resolve.  But now, on the point of departure,
+the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two children,
+adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed on her
+so that she was still in danger of backing out.  The reading of
+that cablegram, with its disquieting reality, clinched the matter.
+She saw herself already nursing Jolly--for of course they would let
+her nurse her own brother!  Jolyon--ever wide and doubtful--had no
+such hope.  Poor June!
+
+Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal life
+was?  Ever since he knew of his boy's arrival at Cape Town the
+thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon.  He
+could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger
+all the time.  The cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a
+relief.  He was now safe from bullets, anyway.  And yet--this
+enteric was a virulent disease!  The Times was full of deaths
+therefrom.  Why could he not be lying out there in that up-country
+hospital, and his boy safe at home?  The un-Forsytean self-sacrifice
+of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered Jolyon.  He
+would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his boy;
+but no such personal motive was influencing them.  He could only
+think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.
+
+Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree.
+She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital
+training away from home.  And, seeing her approach, he thought:
+'She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom.
+Thank God she isn't going out.'  She had seated herself in the
+swing, very silent and still.  'She feels this,' thought Jolyon,
+'as much as I' and, seeing her eyes fixed on him, he said: "Don't
+take it to heart too much, my child.  If he weren't ill, he might
+be in much greater danger."
+
+Holly got out of the swing.
+
+"I want to tell you something, Dad.  It was through me that Jolly
+enlisted and went out."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love.  We
+used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged.  Jolly found it out,
+and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist.  It was
+all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too.  Because if anything
+happens to either of them I should feel awful.  Besides, I'm just
+as much trained as June."
+
+Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony.
+So this was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself;
+and his three children were Forsytes after all.  Surely Holly might
+have told him all this before!  But he smothered the sarcastic
+sayings on his lips.  Tenderness to the young was perhaps the most
+sacred article of his belief.  He had got, no doubt, what he
+deserved.  Engaged!  So this was why he had so lost touch with her!
+And to young Val Dartie--nephew of Soames--in the other camp!  It
+was all terribly distasteful.  He closed his easel, and set his
+drawing against the tree.
+
+"Have you told June?"
+
+"Yes; she says she'll get me into her cabin somehow.  It's a single
+cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor.  If you consent,
+she'll go up now and get permission."
+
+'Consent?' thought Jolyon.  'Rather late in the day to ask for
+that!'  But again he checked himself.
+
+"You're too young, my dear; they won't let you."
+
+"June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town.  If
+they won't let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on
+training there.  Let me go, Dad!"
+
+Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.
+
+"I never stop anyone from doing anything," he said.
+
+Holly flung her arms round his neck.
+
+"Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world."
+
+'That means the worst,' thought Jolyon.  If he had ever doubted his
+creed of tolerance he did so then.
+
+"I'm not friendly with Val's family," he said, "and I don't know
+Val, but Jolly didn't like him."
+
+Holly looked at the distance and said:
+
+"I love him."
+
+"That settles it," said Jolyon dryly, then catching the expression
+on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: 'Is anything more
+pathetic than the faith of the young?' Unless he actually forbade
+her going it was obvious that he must make the best of it, so he
+went up to town with June.  Whether due to her persistence, or the
+fact that the official they saw was an old school friend of
+Jolyon's, they obtained permission for Holly to share the single
+cabin.  He took them to Surbiton station the following evening, and
+they duly slid away from him, provided with money, invalid foods,
+and those letters of credit without which Forsytes do not travel.
+
+He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late
+dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him
+that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show
+them that he appreciated their sympathy.  But it was a real relief
+to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones--cunningly chosen
+by young Bosinney for shape and colour--with night closing in
+around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the trees,
+and smelling so sweet that it made him ache.  The grass was
+drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down,
+till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three,
+not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
+father was always nearest to the house, and his son always nearest
+to the terrace edge.  Each had an arm lightly within his arm; he
+dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should disturb them,
+and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it dropped from his
+lips, at last, which were getting hot.  They left him then, and his
+arms felt chilly.  Three Jolyons in one Jolyon they had walked.
+
+He stood still, counting the sounds--a carriage passing on the
+highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage's farm, the whispering
+trees, the groom playing on his penny whistle.  A multitude of
+stars up there--bright and silent, so far off!  No moon as yet!
+Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the iris
+flowers along the terrace edge--his favourite flower that had the
+night's own colour on its curving crumpled petals.  He turned round
+to the house.  Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to live in
+all that part of it.  Stark loneliness!  He could not go on living
+here alone.  And yet, so long as there was beauty, why should a man
+feel lonely?  The answer--as to some idiot's riddle--was: Because
+he did.  The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for at
+the back of beauty was harmony, and at the back of harmony was--
+union.  Beauty could not comfort if the soul were out of it.  The
+night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of grapes on it in starshine,
+and the breath of grass and honey coming from it, he could not
+enjoy, while she who was to him the life of beauty, its embodiment
+and essence, was cut off from him, utterly cut off now, he felt, by
+honourable decency.
+
+He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that
+resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their
+own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers.  But after
+dawn he dozed off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.
+
+He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains--high as the
+very stars--stretching in a semi-circle from footlights to
+footlights.  He himself was very small, a little black restless
+figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not
+altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only
+experiencing but watching.  This figure of himself and Soames was
+trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and
+dark, kept him in.  Several times he had crossed in front of them
+before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift--a tall chink of
+beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise,
+remote, ineffable.  Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he
+found the curtains closing before him.  Bitterly disappointed he--
+or was it Soames?--moved on, and there was the chink again through
+the parted curtains, which again closed too soon.  This went on and
+on and he never got through till he woke with the word "Irene" on
+his lips.  The dream disturbed him badly, especially that
+identification of himself with Soames.
+
+Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours riding
+Jolly's horse in search of fatigue.  And on the second day he made
+up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get
+permission to follow his daughters to South Africa.  He had just
+begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:
+
+
+"GREEN HOTEL,
+"June 13.
+" RICHMOND.
+
+"MY DEAR JOLYON,
+
+"You will be surprised to see how near I am to you.  Paris became
+impossible--and I have come here to be within reach of your advice.
+I would so love to see you again.  Since you left Paris I don't
+think I have met anyone I could really talk to.  Is all well with
+you and with your boy?  No one knows, I think, that I am here at
+present.
+
+"Always your friend,
+
+"IRENE."
+
+
+Irene within three miles of him!--and again in flight!  He stood
+with a very queer smile on his lips.  This was more than he had
+bargained for!
+
+About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he went
+along, he thought: 'Richmond Park!  By Jove, it suits us Forsytes!'
+Not that Forsytes lived there--nobody lived there save royalty,
+rangers, and the deer--but in Richmond Park Nature was allowed to
+go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of being natural,
+seeming to say: 'Look at my instincts--they are almost passions,
+very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of course; the very hub of
+possession is to possess oneself.'  Yes! Richmond Park possessed
+itself, even on that bright day of June, with arrowy cuckoos
+shifting the tree-points of their calls, and the wood doves
+announcing high summer.
+
+The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o'clock, stood nearly
+opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was
+modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry
+tart, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost
+always standing before the door.
+
+In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion,
+Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work,
+playing 'Hansel and Gretel' out of an old score.  Above her on a
+wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony,
+amongst deer-hounds, Scotch. caps, and slain stags; beside her in a
+pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy fuchsia.  The
+Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock
+Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the
+past century.
+
+"If the proprietor had eyes," he said, "he would show you the door;
+you have broken through his decorations."  Thus lightly he
+smothered up an emotional moment.  Having eaten cold beef, pickled
+walnut, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they
+walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence
+Jolyon had dreaded.
+
+"You haven't told me about Paris," he said at last.
+
+"No.  I've been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that.
+But then Soames came.  By the little Niobe--the same story; would I
+go back to him?"
+
+"Incredible!"
+
+She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now.
+Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: 'I
+have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.'
+
+For sheer emotional intensity had he ever--old as he was--passed
+through such a moment?
+
+The words: 'Irene, I adore you!' almost escaped him.  Then, with a
+clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision
+capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white
+wall.
+
+"My boy is very ill out there," he said quietly.
+
+Irene slipped her arm through his.
+
+"Let's walk on; I understand."
+
+No miserable explanation to attempt!  She had understood!  And they
+walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the
+rabbitholes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly.  He left her two
+hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.
+
+'She knows of my feeling for her, then,' he thought.  Of course!
+One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OVER THE RIVER
+
+
+Jolly was tired to death of dreams.  They had left him now too wan
+and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly
+remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze
+through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running by
+in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond.  He
+knew what the Karoo was now, even if he had not seen a Boer roll
+over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of flying bullets.  This
+pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled powder.  A
+thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit--who knew?
+Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil thing its
+victory--just enough to know that there were many lying here with
+him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch
+that thread of river and be able to remember faintly those far-away
+things....
+
+The sun was nearly down.  It would be cooler soon.  He would have
+liked to know the time--to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth, to
+hear the repeater strike.  It would have been friendly, home-like.
+He had not even strength to remember that the old watch was last
+wound the day he began to lie here.  The pulse of his brain beat so
+feebly that faces which came and went, nurse's, doctor's,
+orderly's, were indistinguishable, just one indifferent face; and
+the words spoken about him meant all the same thing, and that
+almost nothing.  Those things he used to do, though far and faint,
+were more distinct--walking past the foot of the old steps at
+Harrow 'bill'--'Here, sir!  Here, sir!'--wrapping boots in the
+Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining boots--grandfather
+coming from somewhere dark--a smell of earth--the mushroom house!
+Robin Hill!  Burying poor old Balthasar in the leaves!  Dad!
+Home....
+
+Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no water
+in it--someone was speaking too.  Want anything?  No.  What could
+one want?  Too weak to want--only to hear his watch strike....
+
+Holly!  She wouldn't bowl properly.  Oh!  Pitch them up!  Not
+sneaks!...  'Back her, Two and Bow!'  He was Two!...  Consciousness
+came once more with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a
+rising blood-red crescent moon.  His eyes rested on it fascinated;
+in the long minutes of brain-nothingness it went moving up and
+up....
+
+"He's going, doctor!"  Not pack boots again?  Never?  'Mind your
+form, Two!'  Don't cry!  Go quietly--over the river--sleep!...
+Dark?  If somebody would--strike--his--watch!...
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOAMES ACTS
+
+
+A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained unopened
+in Soames' pocket throughout two hours of sustained attention to
+the affairs of the 'New Colliery Company,' which, declining almost
+from the moment of old Jolyon's retirement from the Chairmanship,
+had lately run down so fast that there was now nothing for it but a
+'winding-up.'  He took the letter out to lunch at his City Club,
+sacred to him for the meals he had eaten there with his father in
+the early seventies, when James used to like him to come and see
+for himself the nature of his future life.
+
+Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed
+potato, he read:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+"In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the matter
+up at the other end with gratifying results.  Observation of 47 has
+enabled us to locate 17 at the Green Hotel, Richmond.  The two have
+been observed to meet daily during the past week in Richmond Park.
+Nothing absolutely crucial has so far been notified.  But in
+conjunction with what we had from Paris at the beginning of the
+year, I am confident we could now satisfy the Court.  We shall, of
+course, continue to watch the matter until we hear from you.
+
+"Very faithfully yours,
+
+"CLAUD POLTEED."
+
+
+Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:
+
+"Take this away; it's cold."
+
+"Shall I bring you some more, sir?"
+
+"No.  Get me some coffee in the other room."
+
+And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two
+acquaintances without sign of recognition.
+
+'Satisfy the Court!' he thought, sitting at a little round marble
+table with the coffee before him.  That fellow Jolyon!  He poured
+out his coffee, sweetened and drank it.  He would disgrace him in
+the eyes of his own children!  And rising, with that resolution hot
+within him, he found for the first time the inconvenience of being
+his own solicitor.  He could not treat this scandalous matter in
+his own office.  He must commit the soul of his private dignity to
+a stranger, some other professional dealer in family dishonour.
+Who was there he could go to?  Linkman and Laver in Budge Row,
+perhaps--reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding acquaintances.
+But before he saw them he must see Polteed again.  But at this
+thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness.  To part with his
+secret?  How find the words?  How subject himself to contempt and
+secret laughter?  Yet, after all, the fellow knew already--oh yes,
+he knew!  And, feeling that he must finish with it now, he took a
+cab into the West End.
+
+In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed's room was positively
+open, and the only precaution was a wire gauze, preventing the
+intrusion of flies.  Two or three had tried to come in, and been
+caught, so that they seemed to be clinging there with the intention
+of being devoured presently.  Mr. Polteed, following the direction
+of his client's eye, rose apologetically and closed the window.
+
+'Posing ass!'  thought Soames.  Like all who fundamentally believe
+in themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little
+sideway smile, he said: "I've had your letter.  I'm going to act.
+I suppose you know who the lady you've been watching really is?"
+Mr. Polteed's expression at that moment was a masterpiece.  It so
+clearly said: 'Well, what do you think?  But mere professional
+knowledge, I assure you--pray forgive it!'  He made a little half
+airy movement with his hand, as who should say: 'Such things--such
+things will happen to us all!'
+
+"Very well, then," said Soames, moistening his lips: "there's no
+need to say more.  I'm instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row
+to act for me.  I don't want to hear your evidence, but kindly make
+your report to them at five o'clock, and continue to observe the
+utmost secrecy."
+
+Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once.  "My
+dear sir," he said.
+
+"Are you convinced," asked Soames with sudden energy, "that there
+is enough?"
+
+The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed's shoulders.
+
+"You can risk it," he murmured; "with what we have, and human
+nature, you can risk it."
+
+Soames rose.  "You will ask for Mr. Linkman.  Thanks; don't get
+up."  He could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him
+and the door.  In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his forehead.
+This had been the worst of it--he could stand the strangers better.
+And he went back into the City to do what still lay before him.
+
+That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was
+overwhelmed by his old longing for a son--a son, to watch him eat
+as he went down the years, to be taken on his knee as James on a
+time had been wont to take him; a son of his own begetting, who
+could understand him because he was the same flesh and blood--
+understand, and comfort him, and become more rich and cultured than
+himself because he would start even better off.  To get old--like
+that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there--and be quite alone
+with possessions heaping up around him; to take no interest in
+anything because it had no future and must pass away from him to
+hands and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot!  No!  He would
+force it through now, and  be free to marry, and have a son to care
+for him before he grew to be like the old old man his father,
+wistfully watching now his sweetbread, now his son.
+
+In that mood he went up to bed.  But, lying warm between those fine
+linen sheets of Emily's providing, he was visited by memories and
+torture.  Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling of her body,
+beset him.  Why had he ever been fool enough to see her again, and
+let this flood back on him so that it was pain to think of her with
+that fellow--that stealing fellow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A SUMMER DAY
+
+
+His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon's mind in the days which
+followed the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park.  No further
+news had come; enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor
+could he expect to hear from June and Holly for three weeks at
+least.  In these days he felt how insufficient were his memories of
+Jolly, and what an amateur of a father he had been.  There was not
+a single memory in which anger played a part; not one
+reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one
+heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly's mother died.
+Nothing but half-ironical affection.  He had been too afraid of
+committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his
+liberty, or interfering with that of his boy.
+
+Only in Irene's presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
+ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his
+son.  With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and
+social creed of which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again
+during his boy's public school and varsity life--all that sense of
+not going back on what father and son expected of each other.  With
+Irene was bound up all his delight in beauty and in Nature.  And he
+seemed to know less and less which was the stronger within him.
+From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely awakened, however,
+one afternoon, just as he was starting off to Richmond, by a young
+man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who came forward
+faintly smiling.
+
+"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte?  Thank you!"  Placing an envelope in Jolyon's
+hand he wheeled off the path and rode away.  Bewildered, Jolyon
+opened it.
+
+"Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte!"
+
+A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant
+reaction 'Why, here's the very thing you want, and you don't like
+it!'  But she must have had one too; and he must go to her at once.
+He turned things over as he went along.  It was an ironical busi-
+ness.  For, whatever the Scriptures said about the heart, it took
+more than mere longings to satisfy the law.  They could perfectly
+well defend this suit, or at least in good faith try to.  But the
+idea of doing so revolted Jolyon.  If not her lover in deed he was
+in desire, and he knew that she was ready to come to him.  Her face
+had told him so.  Not that he exaggerated her feeling for him.  She
+had had her grand passion, and he could not expect another from her
+at his age.  But she had trust in him, affection for him, and must
+feel that he would be a refuge.  Surely she would not ask him to
+defend the suit, knowing that he adored her!  Thank Heaven she had
+not that maddening British conscientiousness which refused
+happiness for the sake of refusing!  She must rejoice at this
+chance of being free after seventeen years of death in life!  As to
+publicity, the fat was in the fire!  To defend the suit would not
+take away the slur.  Jolyon had all the proper feeling of a Forsyte
+whose privacy is threatened: If he was to be  hung by the Law, by
+all means let it be for a sheep!  Moreover the notion of standing
+in a witness box and swearing to the truth that no gesture, not
+even a word of love had passed between them seemed to him more
+degrading than to take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer--more
+truly degrading, considering the feeling in his heart, and just as
+bad and painful for his children.  The thought of explaining away,
+if he could, before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their
+meetings in Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him.
+The brutality and hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process;
+the probability that they would not be believed--the mere vision of
+her, whom he looked on as the embodiment of Nature and of Beauty,
+standing there before all those suspicious, gloating eyes was
+hideous to him.  No, no!  To defend a suit only made a London
+holiday, and sold the newspapers.  A thousand times better accept
+what Soames and the gods had sent!
+
+'Besides,' he thought honestly, 'who knows whether, even for my
+boy's sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer?
+Anyway, her neck will be out of chancery at last!'  Thus absorbed,
+he was hardly conscious of the heavy heat.  The sky had become
+overcast, purplish with little streaks of white.  A heavy heat-drop
+plashed a little star pattern in the dust of the road as he entered
+the Park.  'Phew!'  he thought, 'thunder!  I hope she's not come to
+meet me; there's a ducking up there!'  But at that very minute he
+saw Irene coming towards the Gate.  'We must scuttle back to Robin
+Hill,' he thought.
+
+                 ***************************
+
+The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o'clock, bringing
+welcome distraction to the clerks in every office.  Soames was
+drinking a cup of tea when a note was brought in to him:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+"Forsyte v.  Forsyte and Forsyte
+
+"In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you that we
+personally served the respondent and co-respondent in this suit
+to-day, at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.
+"Faithfully yours,
+
+"LINKMAN AND LAVER."
+
+
+For some minutes Soames stared at that note.  Ever since he had
+given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them.  It was
+so scandalous, such a general disgrace!  The evidence, too, what he
+had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive; somehow, he
+believed less and less that those two had gone all lengths.  But
+this, of course, would drive them to it; and he suffered from the
+thought.  That fellow to have her love, where he had failed!  Was
+it too late?  Now that they had been brought up sharp by service of
+this petition, had he not a lever with which he could force them
+apart?  'But if I don't act at once,' he thought, 'it will be too
+late, now they've had this thing.  I'll go and see him; I'll go
+down!'
+
+And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the
+'new-fangled' motor-cabs.  It might take a long time to run that
+fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come
+to after such a shock!  'If I were a theatrical ass,' he thought,
+'I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or
+something!'  He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of
+'Magentie versus Wake,' intending to read them on the way down.  He
+did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and jarred,
+unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or the smell
+of petrol.  He must be guided by the fellow's attitude; the great
+thing was to keep his head!
+
+London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared
+Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards.  What a lot
+of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in
+the great scramble!  Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames
+thought: 'I could let go if I liked!  Nothing could touch me; I
+could snap my fingers, live as I wished--enjoy myself!'  No!  One
+could not live as he had and just drop it all--settle down in
+Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made.  A man's life
+was what he possessed and sought to possess.  Only fools thought
+otherwise--fools, and socialists, and libertines!
+
+The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace.  'Fifteen miles
+an hour, I should think!' he mused; 'this'll take people out of
+town to live!' and he thought of its bearing on the portions of
+London owned by his father--he himself had never taken to that form
+of investment, the gambler in him having all the outlet needed in
+his pictures.  And the cab sped on, down the hill past Wimbledon
+Common.  This interview!  Surely a man of fifty-two with grown-up
+children, and hung on the line, would not be reckless.  'He won't
+want to disgrace the family,' he thought; 'he was as fond of his
+father as I am of mine, and they were brothers.  That woman brings
+destruction--what is it in her?  I've never known.'  The cab
+branched off, along the side of a wood, and he heard a late cuckoo
+calling, almost the first he had heard that year.  He was now
+almost opposite the site he had originally chosen for his house,
+and which had been so unceremoniously rejected by Bosinney in
+favour of his own choice.  He began passing his handkerchief over
+his face and hands, taking deep breaths to give him steadiness.
+'Keep one's head,' he thought, 'keep one's head!'
+
+The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and
+the sound of music met him.  He had forgotten the fellow's
+daughters.
+
+"I may be out again directly," he said to the driver, "or I may be
+kept some time"; and he rang the bell.
+
+Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he
+felt relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by
+June or Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with
+complete surprise he saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting in
+an armchair listening.  They both stood up.  Blood surged into
+Soames' brain, and all his resolution to be guided by this or that
+left him utterly.  The look of his farmer forbears--dogged
+Forsytes down by the sea, from 'Superior Dosset' back--grinned
+out of his face.
+
+"Very pretty!"  he said.
+
+He heard the fellow murmur:
+
+"This is hardly the place--we'll go to the study, if you don't
+mind."  And they both passed him through the curtain opening.  In
+the little room to which he followed them, Irene stood by the open
+window, and the 'fellow' close to her by a big chair.  Soames
+pulled the door to behind him with a slam; the sound carried him
+back all those years to the day when he had shut out Jolyon--shut
+him out for meddling with his affairs.
+
+"Well," he said, "what have you to say for yourselves?"
+
+The fellow had the effrontery to smile.
+
+"What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask.  I
+should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."
+
+"Oh!" said Soames; "you think so!  I came to tell you that I'll
+divorce her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both, unless
+you swear to keep clear of each other from now on."
+
+He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering
+and his hands twitching.  Neither of them answered; but their faces
+seemed to him as if contemptuous.
+
+"Well," he said; "you--Irene?"
+
+Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.
+
+"Let her alone!" said Soames furiously.  "Irene, will you swear
+it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! and you?"
+
+"Still less."
+
+"So then you're guilty, are you?"
+
+"Yes, guilty."  It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with
+that unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried
+beyond himself, he cried:
+
+"You are a devil"
+
+"Go out!  Leave this house, or I'll do you an injury."
+
+That fellow to talk of injuries!  Did he know how near his throat
+was to being scragged?
+
+"A trustee," he said, "embezzling trust property!  A thief,
+stealing his cousin's wife."
+
+"Call me what you like.  You have chosen your part, we have chosen
+ours.  Go out!"
+
+If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that
+moment.
+
+"I'll make you pay!" he said.
+
+"I shall be very happy."
+
+At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of
+him who had nicknamed him 'the man of property,' Soames stood
+glaring.  It was ridiculous!
+
+There they were, kept from violence by some secret force.  No blow
+possible, no words to meet the case.  But he could not, did not
+know how to turn and go away.  His eyes fastened on Irene's face--
+the last time he would ever see that fatal face--the last time, no
+doubt!
+
+"You," he said suddenly, "I hope you'll treat him as you treated
+me--that's all."
+
+He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not quite
+relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the hall, and
+got into his cab.  He lolled against the cushion with his eyes
+shut.  Never in his life had he been so near to murderous violence,
+never so thrown away the restraint which was his second nature.  He
+had a stripped and naked feeling, as if all virtue had gone out of
+him--life meaningless, mind-striking work.  Sunlight streamed in on
+him, but he felt cold.  The scene he had passed through had gone
+from him already, what was before him would not materialise, he
+could catch on to nothing; and he felt frightened, as if he had
+been hanging over the edge of a precipice, as if with another turn
+of the screw sanity would have failed him.  'I'm not fit for it,'
+he thought; 'I mustn't--I'm not fit for it.'  The cab sped on, and
+in mechanical procession trees, houses, people passed, but had no
+significance.  'I feel very queer,' he thought; 'I'll take a
+Turkish bath.--I've been very near to something.  It won't do.'
+The cab whirred its way back over the bridge, up the Fulham Road,
+along the Park.
+
+"To the Hammam," said Soames.
+
+Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so comforting!
+Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte coming out, red
+and glistening.
+
+"Hallo!" said George; "what are you training for?  You've not got
+much superfluous."
+
+Buffoon!  Soames passed him with his sideway smile.  Lying back,
+rubbing his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he
+thought: 'Let them laugh!  I won't feel anything!  I can't stand
+violence!  It's not good for me!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SUMMER NIGHT
+
+
+Soames left dead silence in the little study.  "Thank you for that
+good lie," said Jolyon suddenly.  "Come out--the air in here is not
+what it was!"
+
+In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained
+peach-trees the two walked up and down in silence.  Old Jolyon had
+planted some cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy
+terrace and the dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed
+daisies; for twelve years they had flourished, till their dark
+spiral shapes had quite a look of Italy.  Birds fluttered softly in
+the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped past, with a steel-blue
+sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass felt springy beneath
+the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased each other.
+After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was wonderfully
+poignant.  Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow strip of
+garden-bed full of mignonette and pansies, and from the bees came a
+low hum in which all other sounds were set--the mooing of a cow
+deprived of her calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an elm-tree at
+the bottom of the meadow.  Who would have thought that behind them,
+within ten miles, London began--that London of the Forsytes, with
+its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its jumbled stone isles
+of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and stucco?  That London
+which had seen Irene's early tragedy, and Jolyon's own hard days;
+that web; that princely workhouse of the possessive instinct!
+
+And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll
+treat him as you treated me.'  That would depend on himself.  Could
+he trust himself?  Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave
+of what he adored?  Could beauty be confided to him?  Or should she
+not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments
+which passed, to return only at her own choosing?  'We are a breed
+of spoilers!' thought Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life
+is not safe with us.  Let her come to me as she will, when she
+will, not at all if she will not.  Let me be just her stand-by, her
+perching-place; never-never her cage!'
+
+She was the chink of beauty in his dream.  Was he to pass through
+the curtains now and reach her?  Was the rich stuff of many
+possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct
+walling in that little black figure of himself, and Soames--was it
+to be rent so that he could pass through into his vision, find
+there something not of the senses only?  'Let me,' he thought, 'ah!
+let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!'
+
+But at dinner there were plans to be made.  To-night she would go
+back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London.  He
+must instruct his solicitor--Jack Herring.  Not a finger must be
+raised to hinder the process of the Law.  Damages exemplary,
+judicial strictures, costs, what they liked--let it go through at
+the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at
+last!  To-morrow he would see Herring--they would go and see him
+together.  And then--abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about
+evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth.  He looked
+round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a
+woman was sitting there.  The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
+mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli,
+had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women--
+this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair,
+her lips, and in her eyes.
+
+'And this is to be mine!'  he thought.  'It frightens me!'
+
+After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee.  They
+sat there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer
+night come very slowly on.  It was still warm and the air smelled
+of lime blossom--early this summer.  Two bats were flighting with
+the faint mysterious little noise they make.  He had placed the
+chairs in front of the study window, and moths flew past to visit
+the discreet light in there.  There was no wind, and not a whisper
+in the old oak-tree twenty yards away!  The moon rose from behind
+the copse, nearly full; and the two lights struggled, till
+moonlight conquered, changing the colour and quality of all the
+garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their feet,
+climbing up, changing their faces.
+
+"Well," said Jolyon at last, "you'll be tired, dear; we'd better
+start.  The maid will show you Holly's room," and he rang the study
+bell.  The maid who came handed him a telegram.  Watching her take
+Irene away, he thought: 'This must have come an hour or more ago,
+and she didn't bring it out to us!  That shows!  Well, we'll be
+hung for a sheep soon!'  And, opening the telegram, he read:
+
+
+"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on
+June 20th.  Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.
+
+
+He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless.  The moon shone in on
+him; a moth flew in his face.  The first day of all that he had not
+thought almost ceaselessly of Jolly.  He went blindly towards the
+window, struck against the old armchair--his father's--and sank
+down on to the arm of it.  He sat there huddled' forward, staring
+into the night.  Gone out like a candle flame; far from home, from
+love, all by himself, in the dark!  His boy!  From a little chap
+always so good to him--so friendly!  Twenty years old, and cut down
+like grass--to have no life at all!  'I didn't really know him,' he
+thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved each other.  It's
+only love that matters.'
+
+To die out there--lonely--wanting them--wanting home!  This seemed
+to his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself.
+No shelter, no protection, no love at the last!  And all the deeply
+rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential clinging
+to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon
+was so strong in all the Forsytes--felt outraged, cut, and torn by
+his boy's lonely passing.  Better far if he had died in battle,
+without time to long for them to come to him, to call out for them,
+perhaps, in his delirium!
+
+The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with
+uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him--the oak-tree his boy
+had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and
+hurt himself, and hadn't cried!
+
+The door creaked.  He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and
+read it.  He heard the faint rustle of her dress.  She sank on her
+knees close to him, and he forced himself to smile at her.  She
+stretched up her arms and drew his head down on her shoulder.  The
+perfume and warmth of her encircled him; her presence gained slowly
+his whole being.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JAMES IN WAITING
+
+
+Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his face
+toward Park Lane.  His father had been unwell lately.  This would
+have to be kept from him!  Never till that moment had he realised
+how much the dread of bringing James' grey hairs down with sorrow
+to the grave had counted with him; how intimately it was bound up
+with his own shrinking from scandal.  His affection for his father,
+always deep, had increased of late years with the knowledge that
+James looked on him as the real prop of his decline.  It seemed
+pitiful that one who had been so careful all his life and done so
+much for the family name--so that it was almost a byword for solid,
+wealthy respectability--should at his last gasp have to see it in
+all the newspapers.  This was like lending a hand to Death, that
+final enemy of Forsytes.  'I must tell mother,' he thought, 'and
+when it comes on, we must keep the papers from him somehow.  He
+sees hardly anyone.'  Letting himself in with his latchkey, he was
+beginning to ascend he stairs when he became conscious of commotion
+on the second-floor landing.  His mother's voice was saying:
+
+"Now, James, you'll catch cold.  Why can't you wait quietly?"
+
+His father's answering
+
+"Wait?  I'm always waiting.  Why doesn't he come in?"
+
+"You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy of
+yourself on the landing."
+
+"He'll go up to bed, I shouldn't wonder.  I shan't sleep."
+
+"Now come back to bed, James."
+
+"Um!  I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell."
+
+"You shan't have to wait till to-morrow morning; I'll go down and
+bring him up.  Don't fuss!"
+
+"There you go--always so cock-a-hoop.  He mayn't come in at all."
+
+"Well, if he doesn't come in you won't catch him by standing out
+here in your dressing-gown."
+
+Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father's tall
+figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over the
+balustrade above.  Light fell on his silvery hair and whiskers,
+investing his head with, a sort of halo.
+
+"Here he is!" he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured,
+and his mother's comfortable answer from the bedroom door:
+
+"That's all right.  Come in, and I'll brush your hair."  James
+extended a thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a
+skeleton, and passed through the doorway of his bedroom.
+
+'What is it?' thought Soames.  'What has he got hold of now?'
+
+His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the
+mirror, while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes through
+and through his hair.  She would do this several times a day, for
+it had on him something of the effect produced on a cat by
+scratching between its ears.
+
+"There you are!" he said.  "I've been waiting."
+
+Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
+examined the mark on it.
+
+"Well," he said, "you're looking better."
+
+James shook his head.
+
+"I want to say something.  Your mother hasn't heard."  He announced
+Emily's ignorance of what he hadn't told her, as if it were a
+grievance.
+
+"Your father's been in a great state all the evening.  I'm sure I
+don't know what about."
+
+The faint 'whisk-whisk' of the brushes continued the soothing of
+her voice.
+
+"No! you know nothing," said James.  "Soames can tell me."  And,
+fixing his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain,
+uncomfortable to watch, on his son, he muttered:
+
+"I'm getting on, Soames.  At my age I can't tell.  I might die any
+time.  There'll be a lot of money.  There's Rachel and Cicely got
+no children; and Val's out there--that chap his father will get
+hold of all he can.  And somebody'll pick up Imogen, I shouldn't
+wonder."
+
+Soames listened vaguely--he had heard all this before.  Whish-
+whish! went the brushes.
+
+"If that's all!"  said Emily.
+
+"All!" cried James; "it's nothing.  I'm coming to that."  And again
+his eyes strained pitifully at Soames.
+
+"It's you, my boy," he said suddenly; "you ought to get a divorce."
+
+That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for Soames'
+composure.  His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on the
+buttonhook, and as if in apology James hurried on:
+
+"I don't know what's become of her--they say she's abroad.  Your
+Uncle Swithin used to admire her--he was a funny fellow."  (So he
+always alluded to his dead twin-'The Stout and the Lean of it,'
+they had been called.)  "She wouldn't be alone, I should say."  And
+with that summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he
+was silent, watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird's.
+Soames, too, was silent.  Whish-whish went the brushes.
+
+"Come, James!  Soames knows best.  It's his 'business."
+
+"Ah!" said James, and the word came from deep down; "but there's
+all my money, and there's his--who's it to go to?  And when he dies
+the name goes out."
+
+Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
+dressing-table coverlet.
+
+"The name?" said Emily, "there are all the other Forsytes."
+
+"As if that helped me," muttered James.  "I shall be in my grave,
+and there'll be nobody, unless he marries again."
+
+"You're quite right," said Soames quietly; "I'm getting a divorce."
+
+James' eyes almost started from his head.
+
+"What?" he cried.  "There! nobody tells me anything."
+
+"Well," said Emily, "who would have imagined you wanted it?  My
+dear boy, that is a surprise, after all these years."
+
+"It'll be a scandal," muttered James, as if to himself; "but I
+can't help that.  Don't brush so hard.  When'll it come on?"
+
+"Before the Long Vacation; it's not defended."
+
+James' lips moved in secret calculation.  "I shan't live to see my
+grandson," he muttered.
+
+Emily ceased brushing.  "Of course you will, James.  Soames will be
+as quick as he can."
+
+There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.
+
+"Here! let's have the eau-de-Cologne," and, putting it to his nose,
+he moved his forehead in the direction of his son.  Soames bent
+over and kissed that brow just where the hair began.  A relaxing
+quiver passed over James' face, as though the wheels of anxiety
+within were running down.
+
+"I'll get to bed," he said; "I shan't want to see the papers when
+that comes.  They're a morbid lot; I can't pay attention to them,
+I'm too old."
+
+Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father say:
+
+"Here, I'm tired.  I'll say a prayer in bed."
+
+And his mother answering
+
+"That's right, James; it'll be ever so much more comfy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+OUT OF THE WEB
+
+
+On Forsyte 'Change the announcement of Jolly's death, among a
+batch of troopers, caused mixed sensation.  Strange to read that
+Jolyon Forsyte (fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of
+disease in the service of his country, and not be able to feel it
+personally.  It revived the old grudge against his father for
+having estranged himself.  For such was still the prestige of old
+Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never quite feel, as might
+have been expected, that it was they who had cut off his
+descendants for irregularity.  The news increased, of course, the
+interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val's name was Dartie, and
+even if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross, it
+would not be at all the same as if his name were Forsyte.  Not even
+casualty or glory to the Haymans would be really satisfactory.
+Family pride felt defrauded.
+
+How the rumour arose, then, that 'something very dreadful, my
+dear,' was pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell, secret
+as he kept everything.  Possibly some eye had seen 'Forsyte v.
+Forsyte and Forsyte,' in the cause list; and had added it to 'Irene
+in Paris with a fair beard.'  Possibly some wall at Park Lane had
+ears.  The fact remained that it was known--whispered among the
+old, discussed among the young--that family pride must soon receive
+a blow.
+
+Soames, paying one, of his Sunday visits to Timothy's--paying it
+with the feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying no
+more--felt knowledge in the air as he came in.  Nobody, of course,
+dared speak of it before him, but each of the four other Forsytes
+present held their breath, aware that nothing could prevent Aunt
+Juley from making them all uncomfortable.  She looked so piteously
+at Soames, she checked herself on the point of speech so often,
+that Aunt Hester excused herself and said she must go and bathe
+Timothy's eye--he had a sty coming.  Soames, impassive, slightly
+supercilious, did not stay long.  He went out with a curse stifled
+behind his pale, just smiling lips.
+
+Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the
+coming scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his
+retirement--for he had come to that grim conclusion.  To go on
+seeing all those people who had known him as a 'long-headed chap,'
+an astute adviser--after that--no!  The fastidiousness and pride
+which was so strangely, so inextricably blended in him with
+possessive obtuseness, revolted against the thought.  He would
+retire, live privately, go on buying pictures, make a great name as
+a collector--after all, his heart was more in that than it had ever
+been in Law.  In pursuance of this now fixed resolve, he had to get
+ready to amalgamate his business with another firm without letting
+people know, for that would excite curiosity and make humiliation
+cast its shadow before.  He had pitched on the firm of Cuthcott,
+Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead.  The full name after
+the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott, Holliday, Kingson,
+Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte.  But after debate as to which of the
+dead still had any influence with the living, it was decided to
+reduce the title to Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte, of whom Kingson
+would be the active and Soames the sleeping partner.  For leaving
+his name, prestige, and clients behind him, Soames would receive
+considerable value.
+
+One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a
+stage of his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth,
+and after writing off liberally for depreciation by the war, found
+his value to be some hundred and thirty thousand pounds.  At his
+father's death, which could not, alas, be delayed much longer, he
+must come into at least another fifty thousand, and his yearly
+expenditure at present just reached two.  Standing among his
+pictures, he saw before him a future full of bargains earned by the
+trained faculty of knowing better than other people.  Selling what
+was about to decline, keeping what was still going up, and
+exercising judicious insight into future taste, he would make a
+unique collection, which at his death would pass to the nation
+under the title 'Forsyte Bequest.'
+
+If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with
+Madame Lamotte.  She had, he knew, but one real ambition--to live
+on her 'renter' in Paris near her grandchildren.  He would buy the
+goodwill of the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price.  Madame would
+live like a Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested as she
+would know how.  (Incidentally Soames meant to put a capable
+manager in her place, and make the restaurant pay good interest on
+his money.  There were great possibilities in Soho.)  On Annette he
+would promise to settle fifteen thousand pounds (whether designedly
+or not), precisely the sum old Jolyon had settled on 'that woman.'
+
+A letter from Jolyon's solicitor to his own had disclosed the fact
+that 'those two' were in Italy.  And an opportunity had been duly
+given for noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in London.
+The matter was clear as daylight, and would be disposed of in half
+an hour or so; but during that half-hour he, Soames, would go down
+to hell; and after that half-hour all bearers of the Forsyte name
+would feel the bloom was off the rose.  He had no illusions like
+Shakespeare that roses by any other name would smell as sweet.  The
+name was a possession, a concrete, unstained piece of property, the
+value of which would be reduced some twenty per cent. at least.
+Unless it were Roger, who had once refused to stand for Parliament,
+and--oh, irony!--Jolyon, hung on the line, there had never been a
+distinguished Forsyte.  But that very lack of distinction was the
+name's greatest asset.  It was a private name, intensely
+individual, and his own property; it had never been exploited for
+good or evil by intrusive report.  He and each member of his family
+owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference
+from the public than had been necessitated by their births, their
+marriages, their deaths.  And during these weeks of waiting and
+preparing to drop the Law, he conceived for that Law a bitter
+distaste, so deeply did he resent its coming violation of his name,
+forced on him by the need he felt to perpetuate that name in a
+lawful manner.  The monstrous injustice of the whole thing excited
+in him a perpetual suppressed fury.  He had asked no better than to
+live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go into the witness
+box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim his failure
+to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of
+his kind.  It was all upside down.  She and that fellow ought to be
+the sufferers, and they--were in Italy!  In these weeks the Law he
+had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian
+of all property, seemed to him quite pitiful.  What could be more
+insane than to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him
+when someone unlawfully took her away from him?  Did the Law not
+know that a man's name was to him the apple of his eye, that it was
+far harder to be regarded as cuckold than as seducer?  He actually
+envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where he, Soames, had
+failed.  The question of damages worried him, too.  He wanted to
+make that fellow suffer, but he remembered his cousin's words, "I
+shall be very happy," with the uneasy feeling that to claim damages
+would make not Jolyon but himself suffer; he felt uncannily that
+Jolyon would rather like to pay them--the chap was so loose.
+Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do.  The claim,
+indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour drew
+near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and
+topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer
+and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!"  And he
+gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money
+would be given to a Home for Fallen Women.  He was a long time
+hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched on it,
+he used to wake up in the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid;
+it'll draw attention.  Something quieter--better taste.'  He did
+not care for dogs, or he would have named them; and it was in
+desperation at last--for his knowledge of charities was limited--
+that he decided on the blind.  That could not be inappropriate, and
+it would make the Jury assess the damages high.
+
+A good many suits were dropping out of the list, which happened to
+be exceptionally thin that summer, so that his case would be
+reached before August.  As the day grew nearer, Winifred was his
+only comfort.  She showed the fellow-feeling of one who had been
+through the mill, and was the 'femme-sole' in whom he confided,
+well knowing that she would not let Dartie into her confidence.
+That ruffian would be only too rejoiced!  At the end of July, on
+the afternoon before the case, he went in to see her.  They had not
+yet been able to leave town, because Dartie had already spent their
+summer holiday, and Winifred dared not go to her father for more
+money while he was waiting not to be told anything about this
+affair of Soames.
+
+Soames found her with a letter in her hand.
+
+"That from Val," he asked gloomily.  "What does he say?"
+
+"He says he's married," said Winifred.
+
+"Whom to, for Goodness' sake?"
+
+Winifred looked up at him.
+
+"To Holly Forsyte, Jolyon's daughter."
+
+"What?"
+
+"He got leave and did it.  I didn't even know he knew her.
+Awkward, isn't it?"
+
+Soames uttered a short laugh at that characteristic minimisation.
+
+"Awkward!  Well, I don't suppose they'll hear about this till they
+come back.  They'd better stay out there.  That fellow will give
+her money."
+
+"But I want Val back," said Winifred almost piteously; "I miss him,
+he helps me to get on."
+
+"I know," murmured Soames.  "How's Dartie behaving now?"
+
+"It might be worse; but it's always money.  Would you like me to
+come down to the Court to-morrow, Soames?"
+
+Soames stretched out his hand for hers.  The gesture so betrayed
+the loneliness in him that she pressed it between her two.
+
+"Never mind, old boy.  You'll feel ever so much better when it's
+all over."
+
+"I don't know what I've done," said Soames huskily; "I never have.
+It's all upside down.  I was fond of her; I've always been."
+
+Winifred saw a drop of blood ooze out of his lip, and the sight
+stirred her profoundly.
+
+"Of course," she said, "it's been too bad of her all along!  But
+what shall I do about this marriage of Val's, Soames?  I don't know
+how to write to him, with this coming on.  You've seen that child.
+Is she pretty?"
+
+"Yes, she's pretty," said Soames.  "Dark--lady-like enough."
+
+'That doesn't sound so bad,' thought Winifred.  'Jolyon had style.'
+
+"It is a coil," she said.  "What will father say?
+
+"Mustn't be told," said Soames.  "The war'll soon be over now,
+you'd better let Val take to farming out there."
+
+It was tantamount to saying that his nephew was lost.
+
+"I haven't told Monty," Winifred murmured desolately.
+
+The case was reached before noon next day, and was over in little
+more than half an hour.  Soames--pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the
+witness-box--had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all
+like one dead.  The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he left
+the Courts of Justice.
+
+Four hours until he became public property!  'Solicitor's divorce
+suit!'  A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within
+him.  'Damn them all!' he thought; 'I won't run away.  I'll act as
+if nothing had happened.'  And in the sweltering heat of Fleet
+Street and Ludgate Hill he walked all the way to his City Club,
+lunched, and went back to his office.  He worked there stolidly
+throughout the afternoon.
+
+On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their
+involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were
+immediately withdrawn.  In front of St. Paul's, he stopped to buy
+the most gentlemanly of the evening papers.  Yes! there he was!
+'Well-known solicitor's divorce.  Cousin co-respondent.  Damages
+given to the blind'--so, they had got that in!  At every other
+face, he thought: 'I wonder if you know!'  And suddenly he felt
+queer, as if something were racing round in his head.
+
+What was this?  He was letting it get hold of him!  He mustn't!  He
+would be ill.  He mustn't think!  He would get down to the river
+and row about, and fish.  'I'm not going to be laid up,' he
+thought.
+
+It flashed across him that he had something of importance to do
+before he went out of town.  Madame Lamotte!  He must explain the
+Law.  Another six months before he was really free!  Only he did
+not want to see Annette!  And he passed his hand over the top of
+his head--it was very hot.
+
+He branched off through Covent Garden.  On this sultry day of late
+July the garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and
+Soho seemed more than ever the disenchanted home of rapscallionism.
+Alone, the Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily painted, with its
+blue tubs and the dwarf trees therein, retained an aloof and
+Frenchified self-respect.  It was the slack hour, and pale trim
+waitresses were preparing the little tables for dinner.  Soames
+went through into the private part.  To his discomfiture Annette
+answered his knock.  She, too, looked pale and dragged down by the
+heat.
+
+"You are quite a stranger," she said languidly.
+
+Soames smiled.
+
+"I haven't wished to be; I've been busy."
+
+"Where's your mother, Annette?  I've got some news for her."
+
+"Mother is not in."
+
+It seemed to Soames that she looked at him in a queer way.  What
+did she know?  How much had her mother told her?  The worry of
+trying to make that out gave him an alarming feeling in the head.
+He gripped the edge of the table, and dizzily saw Annette come
+forward, her eyes clear with surprise.  He shut his own and said:
+
+"It's all right.  I've had a touch of the sun, I think."  The sun!
+What he had was a touch of 'darkness!  Annette's voice, French and
+composed, said:
+
+"Sit down, it will pass, then."  Her hand pressed his shoulder, and
+Soames sank into a chair.  When the dark feeling dispersed, and he
+opened his eyes, she was looking down at him.  What an inscrutable
+and odd expression for a girl of twenty!
+
+"Do you feel better?"
+
+"It's nothing," said Soames.  Instinct told him that to be feeble
+before her was not helping him--age was enough handicap without
+that.  Will-power was his fortune with Annette, he had lost ground
+these latter months from indecision--he could not afford to lose
+any more.  He got up, and said:
+
+"I'll write to your mother.  I'm going down to my river house for a
+long holiday.  I want you both to come there presently and stay.
+It's just at its best.  You will, won't you?"
+
+"It will be veree nice."  A pretty little roll of that 'r' but no
+enthusiasm.  And rather sadly he added:
+
+"You're feeling the heat; too, aren't you, Annette?  It'll do you
+good to be on the river.  Good-night."  Annette swayed forward.
+There was a sort of compunction in the movement.
+
+"Are you fit to go?  Shall I give you some coffee?"
+
+"No," said Soames firmly.  "Give me your hand."
+
+She held out her hand, and Soames raised it to his lips.  When he
+looked up, her face wore again that strange expression.  'I can't
+tell,' he thought, as he went out; 'but I mustn't think--I mustn't
+worry:
+
+But worry he did, walking toward Pall Mall.  English, not of her
+religion, middle-aged, scarred as it were by domestic tragedy, what
+had he to give her?  Only wealth, social position, leisure,
+admiration!  It was much, but was it enough for a beautiful girl of
+twenty?  He felt so ignorant about Annette.  He had, too, a curious
+fear of the French nature of her mother and herself.  They knew so
+well what they wanted.  They were almost Forsytes.  They would
+never grasp a shadow and miss a substance
+
+The tremendous effort it was to write a simple note to Madame
+Lamotte when he reached his Club warned him still further that he
+was at the end of his tether.
+
+
+"MY DEAR MADAME (he said),
+
+"You will see by the enclosed newspaper cutting that I obtained my
+decree of divorce to-day.  By the English Law I shall not, however,
+be free to marry again till the decree is confirmed six months
+hence.  In the meanwhile I have the honor to ask to be considered a
+formal suitor for the hand of your daughter.  I shall write again
+in a few days and beg you both to come and stay at my river house.
+"I am, dear Madame,
+"Sincerely yours,
+
+"SOAMES FORSYTE."
+
+
+Having sealed and posted this letter, he went into the dining-room.
+Three mouthfuls of soup convinced him that he could not eat; and,
+causing a cab to be summoned, he drove to Paddington Station and
+took the first train to Reading.  He reached his house just as the
+sun went down, and wandered out on to the lawn.  The air was
+drenched with the scent of pinks and picotees in his flower-
+borders.  A stealing coolness came off the river.
+
+Rest-peace!  Let a poor fellow rest!  Let not worry and shame and
+anger chase like evil nightbirds in his head!  Like those doves
+perched half-sleeping on their dovecot, like the furry creatures in
+the woods on the far side, and the simple folk in their cottages,
+like the trees and the river itself, whitening fast in twilight,
+like the darkening cornflower-blue sky where stars were coming up--
+let him cease from himself, and rest!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+PASSING OF AN AGE
+
+
+The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the last
+day of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily was
+told until it was accomplished.
+
+The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet
+hotels in London where greater expense can be incurred for less
+result than anywhere else under heaven.  Her beauty in the best
+Parisian frocks was giving him more satisfaction than if he had
+collected a perfect bit of china, or a jewel of a picture; he
+looked forward to the moment when he would exhibit her in Park
+Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy's.
+
+If some one had asked him in those days, "In confidence--are you in
+love with this girl?" he would have replied: "In love?  What is
+love?  If you mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in those
+old days when I first met her and she would not have me; when I
+sighed and starved after her and couldn't rest a minute until she
+yielded--no!  If you mean do I admire her youth and prettiness, do
+my senses ache a little when I see her moving about--yes!  Do I
+think she will keep me straight, make me a creditable wife and a
+good mother for my children?--again, yes!"
+
+"What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the women
+who are married get from the men who marry them?" And if the
+enquirer had pursued his query, "And do you think it was fair to
+have tempted this girl to give herself to you for life unless you
+have really touched her heart?" he would have answered: "The French
+see these things differently from us.  They look at marriage from
+the point of view of establishments and children; and, from my own
+experience, I am not at all sure that theirs is not the sensible
+view.  I shall not expect this time more than I can get, or she can
+give.  Years hence I shouldn't be surprised if I have trouble with
+her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have children by then.  I
+shall shut my eyes.  I have had my great passion; hers is perhaps
+to come--I don't suppose it will be for me.  I offer her a great
+deal, and I don't expect much in return, except children, or at
+least a son.  But one thing I am sure of--she has very good sense!"
+
+And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, "You do not look,
+then, for spiritual union in this marriage?" Soames would have
+lifted his sideway smile, and rejoined: "That's as it may be.  If I
+get satisfaction for my senses, perpetuation of myself; good taste
+and good humour in the house; it is all I can expect at my age.  I
+am not likely to be going out of my way towards any far-fetched
+sentimentalism."  Whereon, the enquirer must in good taste have
+ceased enquiry.
+
+The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth
+grey with unshed tears.  Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette
+beside him in dark furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning of
+the funeral procession, to the rails in Hyde Park.  Little moved
+though he ever was by public matters, this event, supremely
+symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich period, impressed his
+fancy.  In '37, when she came to the throne, 'Superior Dosset' was
+still building houses to make London hideous; and James, a
+stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his
+practice in the Law.  Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved
+their upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; 'tigers' swung behind
+cabriolets; women said, 'La!' and owned no property; there were
+manners in the land, and pigsties for the poor; unhappy devils were
+hanged for little crimes, and Dickens had but just begun to write.
+Well-nigh two generations had slipped by--of steamboats, railways,
+telegraphs, bicycles, electric light, telephones, and now these
+motorcars--of such accumulated wealth, that eight per cent. had
+become three, and Forsytes were numbered by the thousand!  Morals
+had changed, manners had changed, men had become monkeys twice-
+removed, God had become Mammon--Mammon so respectable as to deceive
+himself: Sixty-four years that favoured property, and had made the
+upper middle class; buttressed, chiselled, polished it, till it was
+almost indistinguishable in manners, morals, speech, appearance,
+habit, and soul from the nobility.  An epoch which had gilded
+individual liberty so that if a man had money, he was free in law
+and fact, and if he had not money he was free in law and not in
+fact.  An era which had canonised hypocrisy, so that to seem to be
+respectable was to be.  A great Age, whose transmuting influence
+nothing had escaped save the nature of man and the nature of the
+Universe.
+
+And to witness the passing of this Age, London--its pet and fancy--
+was pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde Park,
+hub of Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes.  Under the
+grey heavens, whose drizzle just kept off, the dark concourse
+gathered to see the show.  The 'good old'  Queen, full of years and
+virtue, had emerged from her seclusion for the last time to make a
+London holiday.  From Houndsditch, Acton, Ealing, Hampstead,
+Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney, Hornsey, Leytonstone,
+Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green pastures where Forsytes
+flourish--Mayfair and Kensington, St. James' and Belgravia,
+Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent's Park, the people swarmed
+down on to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky
+pomp and pageantry.  Never again would a Queen reign so long, or
+people have a chance to see so much history buried for their money.
+A pity the war dragged on, and that the Wreath of Victory could not
+be laid upon her coffin!  All else would be there to follow and
+commemorate--soldiers, sailors, foreign princes, half-masted
+bunting, tolling bells, and above all the surging, great,
+dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple sadness here and there
+deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation.  After
+all, more than a Queen was going to her rest, a woman who had
+braved sorrow, lived well and wisely according to her lights.
+
+Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in
+Annette's, Soames waited.  Yes! the Age was passing!  What with
+this Trade Unionism, and Labour fellows in the House of Commons,
+with continental fiction, and something in the general feel of
+everything, not to be expressed in words, things were very
+different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking night, and George
+Forsyte saying: "They're all socialists, they want our goods."
+Like James, Soames didn't know, he couldn't tell--with Edward on
+the throne!  Things would never be as safe again as under good old
+Viccy!  Convulsively he pressed his young wife's arm.  There, at
+any rate, was something substantially his own, domestically certain
+again at last; something which made property worth while--a real
+thing once more.  Pressed close against her and trying to ward
+others off, Soames was content.  The crowd swayed round them, ate
+sandwiches and dropped crumbs; boys who had climbed the plane-trees
+chattered above like monkeys, threw twigs and orange-peel.  It was
+past time; they should be coming soon!  And, suddenly, a little
+behind them to the left, he saw a tallish man with a soft hat and
+short grizzling beard, and a tallish woman in a little round fur
+cap and veil.  Jolyon and Irene talking, smiling at each other,
+close together like Annette and himself!  They had not seen him;
+and stealthily, with a very queer feeling in his heart, Soames
+watched those two.  They looked happy!  What had they come here
+for--inherently illicit creatures, rebels from the Victorian ideal?
+What business had they in this crowd?  Each of them twice exiled by
+morality--making a boast, as it were, of love and laxity!  He
+watched them fascinated; admitting grudgingly even with his arm
+thrust through Annette's that--that she--Irene--No! he would not
+admit it; and he turned his eyes away.  He would not see them, and
+let the old bitterness, the old longing rise up within him!  And
+then Annette turned to him and said: "Those two people, Soames;
+they know you, I am sure.  Who are they?"
+
+Soames nosed sideways.
+
+"What people?"
+
+"There, you see them; just turning away.  They know you."
+
+"No," Soames answered; "a mistake, my dear."
+
+"A lovely face!  And how she walk!  Elle est tres distinguee!"
+
+Soames looked then.  Into his life, out of his life she had walked
+like that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the
+contact of his soul!  He turned abruptly from that receding
+vision of the past.
+
+"You'd better attend," he said, "they're coming now!"
+
+But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the head
+of the procession, he was quivering with the sense of always
+missing something, with instinctive regret that he had not got them
+both.
+
+Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long line
+wound in through the Park gate.  He heard Annette whisper, "How sad
+it is and beautiful!" felt the clutch of her hand as she stood up
+on tiptoe; and the crowd's emotion gripped him.  There it was--the
+bier of the Queen, coffin of the Age slow passing!  And as it went
+by there came a murmuring groan from all the long line of those who
+watched, a sound such as Soames had never heard, so unconscious,
+primitive, deep and wild, that neither he nor any knew whether they
+had joined in uttering it.  Strange sound, indeed!  Tribute of an
+Age to its own death....  Ah!  Ah!....  The hold on life had
+slipped.  That which had seemed eternal was gone!  The Queen--God
+bless her!
+
+It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves
+on over grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside
+down the dense crowds mile after mile.  It was a human sound, and
+yet inhuman, pushed out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate
+knowledge of universal death and change.  None of us--none of us
+can hold on for ever!
+
+It left silence for a little--a very little time, till tongues
+began, eager to retrieve interest in the show.  Soames lingered
+just long enough to gratify Annette, then took her out of the Park
+to lunch at his father's in Park Lane....
+
+James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window.  The
+last show he would see, last of so many!  So she was gone!  Well,
+she was getting an old woman.  Swithin and he had seen her crowned-
+-slim slip of a girl, not so old as Imogen!  She had got very stout
+of late.  Jolyon and he had seen her married to that German chap,
+her husband--he had turned out all right before he died, and left
+her with that son of his.  And he remembered the many evenings he
+and his brothers and their cronies had wagged their heads over
+their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his salad days.  And now
+he had come to the throne.  They said he had steadied down--he
+didn't know--couldn't tell!  He'd make the money fly still, he
+shouldn't wonder.  What a lot of people out there!  It didn't seem
+so very long since he and Swithin stood in the crowd outside
+Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin had taken him
+to Cremorne afterwards--racketty chap, Swithin; no, it didn't seem
+much longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had joined with Roger in
+renting a balcony in Piccadilly.
+
+Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in August!
+And there was Soames married again to a French girl.  The French
+were a queer lot, but they made good mothers, he had heard.  Things
+changed!  They said this German Emperor was here for the funeral,
+his telegram to old Kruger had been in shocking taste.  He should
+not be surprised if that chap made trouble some day.  Change!  H'm!
+Well, they must look after themselves when he was gone: he didn't
+know where he'd be!  And now Emily had asked Dartie to lunch, with
+Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames' wife--she was always doing
+something.  And there was Irene living with that fellow Jolyon,
+they said.  He'd marry her now, he supposed.
+
+'My brother Jolyon,' he thought, 'what would he have said to it
+all?' And somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his elder
+brother, once so looked up to, would have said, so worried James
+that he got up from his chair by the window, and began slowly,
+feebly to pace the room.
+
+'She was a pretty thing, too,' he thought; 'I was fond of her.
+Perhaps Soames didn't suit her--I don't know--I can't tell.  We
+never had any trouble with our wives.'  Women had changed
+everything had changed!  And now the Queen was dead--well, there it
+was!  A movement in the crowd brought him to a standstill at the
+window, his nose touching the pane and whitening from the chill of
+it.  They had got her as far as Hyde Park Corner--they were passing
+now!  Why didn't Emily come up here where she could see, instead of
+fussing about lunch.  He missed her at that moment--missed her!
+Through the bare branches of the plane-trees he could just see the
+procession, could see the hats coming off the people's heads--a lot
+of them would catch colds, he shouldn't wonder!  A voice behind him
+said:
+
+"You've got a capital view here, James!"
+
+"There you are!" muttered James; "why didn't you come before?  You
+might have missed it!"
+
+And he was silent, staring with all his might.
+
+"What's the noise?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"There's no noise," returned Emily; "what are you thinking of?--
+they wouldn't cheer."
+
+"I can hear it."
+
+"Nonsense, James!"
+
+No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was the
+groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.
+
+"Don't you ever tell me where I'm buried," he said suddenly.  "I
+shan't want to know."  And he turned from the window.  There she
+went, the old Queen; she'd had a lot of anxiety--she'd be glad to
+be out of it, he should think!
+
+Emily took up the hair-brushes.
+
+"There'll be just time to brush your head," she said, "before they
+come.  You must look your best, James."
+
+"Ah!" muttered James; "they say she's pretty."
+
+The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the
+dining-room.  James was seated by the fire when she was brought in.
+He placed, his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly raised
+himself.  Stooping and immaculate in his frock-coat, thin as a line
+in Euclid, he received Annette's hand in his; and the anxious eyes
+of his furrowed face, which had lost its colour now, doubted above
+her.  A little warmth came into them and into his cheeks, refracted
+from her bloom.
+
+"How are you?" he said.  "You've been to see the Queen, I suppose?
+Did you have a good crossing?"
+
+In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of his
+name.
+
+Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette murmured
+something in French which James did not understand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, "you want your lunch, I expect.  Soames, ring
+the bell; we won't wait for that chap Dartie."  But just then they
+arrived.  Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see 'the old
+girl.'  With an early cocktail beside him, he had taken a 'squint'
+from the smoking-room of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen
+had been obliged to come back from the Park to fetch him thence.
+His brown eyes rested on Annette with a stare of almost startled
+satisfaction.  The second beauty that fellow Soames had picked up!
+What women could see in him!  Well, she would play him the same
+trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a lucky
+devil!  And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of
+Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his
+assurance.  Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred's
+composure, Imogen's enquiring friendliness, Dartie's showing-off,
+and James' solicitude about her food, it was not, Soames felt, a
+successful lunch for his bride.  He took her away very soon.
+
+"That Monsieur Dartie," said Annette in the cab, "je n'aime pas ce
+type-la!"
+
+"No, by George!" said Soames.
+
+"Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty.  Your father
+is veree old.  I think your mother has trouble with him; I should
+not like to be her."
+
+Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his
+young wife; but it disquieted him a little.  The thought may have
+just flashed through him, too: 'When I'm eighty she'll be
+fifty-five, having trouble with me!'
+
+"There's just one other house of my relations I must take you to,"
+he said; "you'll find it funny, but we must get it over; and then
+we'll dine and go to the theatre."
+
+In this way he prepared her for Timothy's.  But Timothy's was
+different.  They were delighted to see dear Soames after this long
+long time; and so this was Annette!
+
+"You are so pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for dear
+Soames, aren't you?  But he's very attentive and careful--such a
+good hush...."  Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips
+just under each of Annette's eyes--she afterwards described them to
+Francie, who dropped in, as: "Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I quite
+wanted to kiss them.  I must say dear Soames is a perfect
+connoisseur.  In her French way, and not so very French either, I
+think she's as pretty--though not so distinguished, not so
+alluring--as Irene.  Because she was alluring, wasn't she? with
+that white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, couleur de--
+what was it?  I always forget."
+
+"Feuille morte," Francie prompted.
+
+"Of course, dead leaves--so strange.  I remember when I was a girl,
+before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy--to 'walk' it was
+called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest, and
+beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady."
+
+"Yes, auntie," said Francie, "but I don't see the connection."
+
+"Oh!" replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, "it was so alluring,
+and her eyes and hair, you know...."  She was silent, as if
+surprised in some indelicacy.  "Feuille morte," she added suddenly;
+"Hester--do remember that!"....
+
+Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether
+Timothy should or should not be summoned to see Annette.
+
+"Oh, don't bother!" said Soames.
+
+"But it's no trouble, only of course Annette's being French might
+upset him a little.  He was so scared about Fashoda.  I think
+perhaps we had better not run the risk, Hester.  It's nice to have
+her all to ourselves, isn't it?  And how are you, Soames?  Have you
+quite got over your...."
+
+Hester interposed hurriedly:
+
+"What do you think of London, Annette?"
+
+Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply.  It came, sensible,
+composed: "Oh! I know London.  I have visited before."
+
+He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the
+restaurant.  The French had different notions about gentility, and
+to shrink from connection with it might seem to her ridiculous; he
+had waited to be married before mentioning it; and now he wished he
+hadn't.
+
+"And what part do you know best?" said Aunt Juley.
+
+"Soho," said Annette simply.
+
+Soames snapped his jaw.
+
+"Soho?" repeated Aunt Juley; "Soho?"
+
+'That'll go round the family,' thought Soames.
+
+"It's very French, and interesting," he said.
+
+"Yes," murmured Aunt Juley, "your Uncle Roger had some houses there
+once; he was always having to turn the tenants out, I remember."
+
+Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.
+
+"Of course," said Aunt Juley, "you will be going down there soon to
+settle in.  We are all so looking forward to the time when Annette
+has a dear little...."
+
+"Juley!" cried Aunt Hester desperately, "ring tea!"
+
+Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.
+
+"I shouldn't mention Soho if I were you," he said in the cab.
+"It's rather a shady part of London; and you're altogether above
+that restaurant business now; I mean," he added, "I want you to
+know nice people, and the English are fearful snobs."
+
+Annette's clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.
+
+"Yes?" she said.
+
+'H'm!' thought Soames, 'that's meant for me!' and he looked at her
+hard.  'She's got good business instincts,' he thought.  'I must
+make her grasp it once for all!'
+
+"Look here, Annette! it's very simple, only it wants
+understanding.  Our professional and leisured classes still think
+themselves a cut above our business classes, except of course the
+very rich.  It may be stupid, but there it is, you see.  It isn't
+advisable in England to let people know that you ran a restaurant
+or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade.  It may have been
+extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on you; you don't
+have such a good time, or meet such nice people--that's all."
+
+"I see," said Annette; "it is the same in France."
+
+"Oh!" murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback.  "Of
+course, class is everything, really."
+
+"Yes," said Annette; "comme vous etes sage."
+
+'That's all right,' thought Soames, watching her lips, 'only she's
+pretty cynical.'  His knowledge of French was not yet such as to
+make him grieve that she had not said 'tu.'  He slipped his arm
+round her, and murmured with an effort:
+
+"Et vous etes ma belle femme."
+
+Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.
+
+"Oh, non!" she said.  "Oh, non! ne parlez pas Francais, Soames.
+What is that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?"
+
+Soames bit his lip.  "God knows!" he said; "she's always saying
+something;" but he knew better than God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SUSPENDED ANIMATION
+
+
+The war dragged on.  Nicholas had been heard to say that it would
+cost three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they'd done
+with it!  The income-tax was seriously threatened.  Still, there
+would be South Africa for their money, once for all.  And though
+the possessive instinct felt badly shaken at three o'clock in the
+morning, it recovered by breakfast-time with the recollection that
+one gets nothing in this world without paying for it.  So, on the
+whole, people went about their business much as if there were no
+war, no concentration camps, no slippery de Wet, no feeling on the
+Continent, no anything unpleasant.  Indeed, the attitude of the
+nation was typified by Timothy's map, whose animation was
+suspended--for Timothy no longer moved the flags, and they could
+not move themselves, not even backwards and forwards as they should
+have done.
+
+Suspended animation went further; it invaded Forsyte 'Change, and
+produced a general uncertainty as to what was going to happen next.
+The announcement in the marriage column of The Times, 'Jolyon
+Forsyte to Irene, only daughter of the late Professor Heron,' had
+occasioned doubt whether Irene had been justly described.  And yet,
+on the whole, relief was felt that she had not been entered as
+'Irene, late the wife,' or 'the divorced wife,' 'of Soames
+Forsyte.'  Altogether, there had been a kind of sublimity from the
+first about the way the family had taken that 'affair.'  As James
+had phrased it, 'There it was!'  No use to fuss!  Nothing to be had
+out of admitting that it had been a 'nasty jar'--in the phraseology
+of the day.
+
+But what would happen now that both Soames and Jolyon were married
+again?  That was very intriguing.  George was known to have laid
+Eustace six to four on a little Jolyon before a little Soames.
+George was so droll!  It was rumoured, too, that he and Dartie had
+a bet as to whether James would attain the age of ninety, though
+which of them had backed James no one knew.
+
+Early in May, Winifred came round to say that Val had been wounded
+in the leg by a spent bullet, and was to be discharged.  His wife
+was nursing him.  He would have a little limp--nothing to speak of.
+He wanted his grandfather to buy him a farm out there where he
+could breed horses.  Her father was giving Holly eight hundred a
+year, so they could be quite comfortable, because his grandfather
+would give Val five, he had said; but as to the farm, he didn't
+know--couldn't tell: he didn't want Val to go throwing away his
+money.
+
+"But you know," said Winifred, "he must do something."
+
+Aunt Hester thought that perhaps his dear grandfather was wise,
+because if he didn't buy a farm it couldn't turn out badly.
+
+"But Val loves horses," said Winifred.  "It'd be such an occupation
+for him."
+
+Aunt Juley thought that horses were very uncertain, had not
+Montague found them so?
+
+"Val's different," said Winifred; "he takes after me."
+
+Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever.  "I always
+remember," she added, "how he gave his bad penny to a beggar.  His
+dear grandfather was so pleased.  He thought it showed such
+presence of mind.  I remember his saying that he ought to go into
+the Navy."
+
+Aunt Hester chimed in: Did not Winifred think that it was much
+better for the young people to be secure and not run any risk at
+their age?
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "if they were in London, perhaps; in London
+it's amusing to do nothing.  But out there, of course, he'll simply
+get bored to death."
+
+Aunt Hester thought that it would be nice for him to work, if he
+were quite sure not to lose by it.  It was not as if they had no
+money.  Timothy, of course, had done so well by retiring.  Aunt
+Juley wanted to know what Montague had said.
+
+Winifred did not tell her, for Montague had merely remarked: "Wait
+till the old man dies."
+
+At this moment Francie was announced.  Her eyes were brimming with
+a smile.
+
+"Well," she said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"Of what, dear?"
+
+"In The Times this morning."
+
+"We haven't seen it, we always read it after dinner; Timothy has it
+till then."
+
+Francie rolled her eyes.
+
+"Do you think you ought to tell us?" said Aunt Juley.  "What was
+it?"
+
+"Irene's had a son at Robin Hill."
+
+Aunt Juley drew in her breath.  "But," she said, "they were only
+married in March!"
+
+"Yes, Auntie; isn't it interesting?"
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "I'm glad.  I was sorry for Jolyon losing
+his boy.  It might have been Val."
+
+Aunt Juley seemed to go into a sort of dream.  "I wonder," she
+murmured, "what dear Soames will think?  He has so wanted to have a
+son himself.  A little bird has always told me that."
+
+"Well," said Winifred, "he's going to--bar accidents."
+
+Gladness trickled out of Aunt Juley's eyes.
+
+"How delightful!" she said.  "When?"
+
+"November."
+
+Such a lucky month!  But she did wish it could be sooner.  It was a
+long time for James to wait, at his age!
+
+To wait!  They dreaded it for James, but they were used to it
+themselves.  Indeed, it was their great distraction.  To wait!  For
+The Times to read; for one or other of their nieces or nephews to
+come in and cheer them up; for news of Nicholas' health; for that
+decision of Christopher's about going on the stage; for information
+concerning the mine of Mrs. MacAnder's nephew; for the doctor to
+come about Hester's inclination to wake up early in the morning;
+for books from the library which were always out; for Timothy to
+have a cold; for a nice quiet warm day, not too hot, when they
+could take a turn in Kensington Gardens.  To wait, one on each side
+of the hearth in the drawing-room, for the clock between them to
+strike; their thin, veined, knuckled hands plying knitting-needles
+and crochet-hooks, their hair ordered to stop--like Canute's waves-
+-from any further advance in colour.  To wait in their black silks
+or satins for the Court to say that Hester might wear her dark
+green, and Juley her darker maroon.  To wait, slowly turning over
+and over, in their old minds the little joys and sorrows, events
+and expectancies, of their little family world, as cows chew
+patient cuds in a familiar field.  And this new event was so well
+worth waiting for.  Soames had always been their pet, with his
+tendency to give them pictures, and his almost weekly visits which
+they missed so much, and his need for their sympathy evoked by the
+wreck of his first marriage.  This new event--the birth of an heir
+to Soames--was so important for him, and for his dear father, too,
+that James might not have to die without some certainty about
+things.  James did so dislike uncertainty; and with Montague, of
+course, he could not feel really satisfied to leave no grand-
+children but the young Darties.  After all, one's own name did
+count!  And as James' ninetieth birthday neared they wondered what
+precautions he was taking.  He would be the first of the Forsytes to
+reach that age, and set, as it were, a new standard in holding on
+to life.  That was so important, they felt, at their ages eighty-
+seven and eighty-five; though they did not want to think of
+themselves when they had Timothy, who was not yet eighty-two, to
+think of.  There was, of course, a better world.  'In my Father's
+house are many mansions' was one of Aunt Juley's favourite sayings-
+-it always comforted her, with its suggestion of house property,
+which had made the fortune of dear Roger.  The Bible was, indeed, a
+great resource, and on very fine Sundays there was church in the
+morning; and sometimes Juley would steal into Timothy's study when
+she was sure he was out, and just put an open New Testament
+casually among the books on his little table--he was a great
+reader, of course, having been a publisher.  But she had noticed
+that Timothy was always cross at dinner afterwards.  And Smither
+had told her more than once that she had picked books off the floor
+in doing the room.  Still, with all that, they did feel that heaven
+could not be quite so cosy as the rooms in which they and Timothy
+had been waiting so long.  Aunt Hester, especially, could not bear
+the thought of the exertion.  Any change, or rather the thought of
+a change--for there never was any--always upset her very much.
+Aunt Juley, who had more spirit, sometimes thought it would be
+quite exciting; she had so enjoyed that visit to Brighton the year
+dear Susan died.  But then Brighton one knew was nice, and it was
+so difficult to tell what heaven would be like, so on the whole she
+was more than content to wait.
+
+On the morning of James' birthday, August the 5th, they felt
+extraordinary animation, and little notes passed between them by
+the hand of Smither while they were having breakfast in their beds.
+Smither must go round and take their love and little presents and
+find out how Mr. James was, and whether he had passed a good night
+with all the excitement.  And on the way back would Smither call in
+at Green Street--it was a little out of her way, but she could take
+the bus up Bond Street afterwards; it would be a nice little change
+for her--and ask dear Mrs. Dartie to be sure and look in before she
+went out of town.
+
+All this Smither did--an undeniable servant trained many years ago
+under Aunt Ann to a perfection not now procurable.  Mr. James, so
+Mrs. James said, had passed an excellent night, he sent his love;
+Mrs. James had said he was very funny and had complained that he
+didn't know what all the fuss was about.  Oh! and Mrs. Dartie sent
+her love, and she would come to tea.
+
+Aunts Juley and Hester, rather hurt that their presents had not
+received special mention--they forgot every year that James could
+not bear to receive presents, 'throwing away their money on him,'
+as he always called it--were 'delighted'; it showed that James was
+in good spirits, and that was so important for him.  And they began
+to wait for Winifred.  She came at four, bringing Imogen, and Maud,
+just back from school, and 'getting such a pretty girl, too,' so
+that it was extremely difficult to ask for news about Annette.
+Aunt Juley, however, summoned courage to enquire whether Winifred
+had heard anything, and if Soames was anxious.
+
+"Uncle Soames is always anxious, Auntie," interrupted Imogen; "he
+can't be happy now he's got it."
+
+The words struck familiarly on Aunt Juley's ears.  Ah! yes; that
+funny drawing of George's, which had not been shown them!  But what
+did Imogen mean?  That her uncle always wanted more than he could
+have?  It was not at all nice to think like that.
+
+Imogen's voice rose clear and clipped:
+
+"Imagine!  Annette's only two years older than me; it must be awful
+for her, married to Uncle Soames."
+
+Aunt Juley lifted her hands in horror.
+
+"My dear," she said, "you don't know what you're talking about.
+Your Uncle Soames is a match for anybody.  He's a very clever man,
+and good-looking and wealthy, and most considerate and careful, and
+not at all old, considering everything."
+
+Imogen, turning her luscious glance from one to the other of the
+'old dears,' only smiled.
+
+"I hope," said Aunt Juley quite severely, "that you will marry as
+good a man."
+
+"I shan't marry a good man, Auntie," murmured Imogen; "they're
+dull."
+
+"If you go on like this," replied Aunt Juley, still very much
+upset, "you won't marry anybody.  We'd better not pursue the
+subject;" and turning to Winifred, she said: "How is Montague?"
+
+That evening, while they were waiting for dinner, she murmured:
+
+"I've told Smither to get up half a bottle of the sweet champagne,
+Hester.  I think we ought to drink dear James' health, and--and the
+health of Soames' wife; only, let's keep that quite secret.  I'll
+Just say like this, 'And you know, Hester!'  and then we'll drink.
+It might upset Timothy."
+
+"It's more likely to upset us," said Aunt Nester.  "But we must, I
+suppose; for such an occasion."
+
+"Yes," said Aunt Juley rapturously, "it is an occasion!  Only fancy
+if he has a dear little boy, to carry the family on!  I do feel it
+so important, now that Irene has had a son.  Winifred says George
+is calling Jolyon 'The Three-Decker,' because of his three
+families, you know!  George is droll.  And fancy!  Irene is living
+after all in the house Soames had built for them both.  It does
+seem hard on dear Soames; and he's always been so regular."
+
+That night in bed, excited and a little flushed still by her glass
+of wine and the secrecy of the second toast, she lay with her
+prayer-book opened flat, and her eyes fixed on a ceiling yellowed
+by the light from her reading-lamp.  Young things!  It was so nice
+for them all!  And she would be so happy if she could see dear
+Soames happy.  But, of course, he must be now, in spite of what
+Imogen had said.  He would have all that he wanted: property, and
+wife, and children!  And he would live to a green old age, like his
+dear father, and forget all about Irene and that dreadful case.  If
+only she herself could be here to buy his children their first
+rocking-horse!  Smither should choose it for her at the stores,
+nice and dappled.  Ah! how Roger used to rock her until she fell
+off!  Oh dear! that was a long time ago!  It was!  'In my Father's
+house are many mansions--'A little scrattling noise caught her ear-
+-'but no mice!'  she thought mechanically.  The noise increased.
+There! it was a mouse!  How naughty of Smither to say there wasn't!
+It would be eating through the wainscot before they knew where they
+were, and they would have to have the builders in.  They were such
+destructive things!  And she lay, with her eyes just moving,
+following in her mind that little scrattling sound, and waiting for
+sleep to release her from it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BIRTH OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on
+the path above the river, turned round and walked back to the
+garden door, without having realised that he had moved.  The sound
+of wheels crunching the drive convinced him that time had passed,
+and the doctor gone.  What, exactly, had he said?
+
+"This is the position, Mr. Forsyte.  I can make pretty certain of
+her life if I operate, but the baby will be born dead.  If I don't
+operate, the baby will most probably be born alive, but it's a
+great risk for the mother--a great risk.  In either case I don't
+think she can ever have another child.  In her state she obviously
+can't decide for herself, and we can't wait for her mother.  It's
+for you to make the decision, while I'm getting what's necessary.
+I shall be back within the hour."
+
+The decision!  What a decision!  No time to get a specialist down!
+No time for anything!
+
+The sound of wheels died away, but Soames still stood intent; then,
+suddenly covering his ears, he walked back to the river.  To come
+before its time like this, with no chance to foresee anything, not
+even to get her mother here!  It was for her mother to make that
+decision, and she couldn't arrive from Paris till to-night!  If
+only he could have understood the doctor's jargon, the medical
+niceties, so as to be sure he was weighing the chances properly;
+but they were Greek to him--like a legal problem to a layman.  And
+yet he must decide!  He brought his hand away from his brow wet,
+though the air was chilly.  These sounds which came from her room!
+To go back there would only make it more difficult.  He must be
+calm, clear.  On the one hand life, nearly certain, of his young
+wife, death quite certain, of his child; and--no more children
+afterwards!  On the other, death perhaps of his wife, nearly
+certain life for the child; and--no more children afterwards!
+Which to choose?....  It had rained this last fortnight--the river
+was very full, and in the water, collected round the little
+house-boat moored by his landing-stage, were many leaves from the
+woods above, brought off by a frost.  Leaves fell, lives drifted
+down--Death!  To decide about death!  And no one to give him a
+hand.  Life lost was lost for good.  Let nothing go that you could
+keep; for, if it went, you couldn't get it back.  It left you bare,
+like those trees when they lost their leaves; barer and barer until
+you, too, withered and came down.  And, by a queer somersault of
+thought, he seemed to see not Annette lying up there behind that
+window-pane on which the sun was shining, but Irene lying in their
+bedroom in Montpellier Square, as it might conceivably have been
+her fate to lie, sixteen years ago.  Would he have hesitated then?
+Not a moment!  Operate, operate!  Make certain of her life!  No
+decision--a mere instinctive cry for help, in spite of his know-
+ledge, even then, that she did not love him!  But this!  Ah! there
+was nothing overmastering in his feeling for Annette!  Many times
+these last months, especially since she had been growing fright-
+ened, he had wondered.  She had a will of her own, was selfish in
+her French way.  And yet--so pretty!  What would she wish--to take
+the risk.  'I know she wants the child,' he thought.  'If it's born
+dead, and no more chance afterwards--it'll upset her terribly.  No
+more chance!  All for nothing!  Married life with her for years and
+years without a child.  Nothing to steady her!  She's too young.
+Nothing to look forward to, for her--for me!  For me!'  He struck
+his hands against his chest!  Why couldn't he think without
+bringing himself in--get out of himself and see what he ought to
+do?  The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it had come in
+contact with a breastplate.  Out of oneself!  Impossible!  Out into
+soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless space!  The very idea
+was ghastly, futile!  And touching there the bedrock of reality,
+the bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames rested for a moment.  When
+one ceased, all ceased; it might go on, but there'd be nothing in
+it!
+
+He looked at his watch.  In half an hour the doctor would be back.
+He must decide!  If against the operation and she died, how face
+her mother and the doctor afterwards?  How face his own conscience?
+It was his child that she was having.  If for the operation--then
+he condemned them both to childlessness.  And for what else had he
+married her but to have a lawful heir?  And his father--at death's
+door, waiting for the news!  'It's cruel!' he thought; 'I ought
+never to have such a thing to settle!  It's cruel!'  He turned
+towards the house.  Some deep, simple way of deciding!  He took out
+a coin, and put it back.  If he spun it, he knew he would not abide
+by what came up!  He went into the dining-room, furthest away from
+that room whence the sounds issued.  The doctor had said there was
+a chance.  In here that chance seemed greater; the river did not
+flow, nor the leaves fall.  A fire was burning.  Soames unlocked
+the tantalus.  He hardly ever touched spirits, but now--he poured
+himself out some whisky and drank it neat, craving a faster flow of
+blood.  'That fellow Jolyon,' he thought; 'he had children already.
+He has the woman I really loved; and now a son by her!  And I--I'm
+asked to destroy my only child!  Annette can't die; it's not
+possible.  She's strong!'
+
+He was still standing sullenly at the sideboard when he heard the
+doctor's carriage, and went out to him.  He had to wait for him to
+come downstairs.
+
+"Well, doctor?"
+
+"The situation's the same.  Have you decided?"
+
+"Yes," said Soames; "don't operate!"
+
+"Not?  You understand--the risk's great?"
+
+In Soames' set face nothing moved but the lips.
+
+"You said there was a chance?"
+
+"A chance, yes; not much of one."
+
+"You say the baby must be born dead if you do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you still think that in any case she can't have another?"
+
+"One can't be absolutely sure, but it's most unlikely."
+
+"She's strong," said Soames; "we'll take the risk."
+
+The doctor looked at him very gravely.  "It's on your shoulders,"
+he said; "with my own wife, I couldn't."
+
+Soames' chin jerked up as if someone had hit him.
+
+"Am I of any use up there?" he asked.
+
+"No; keep away."
+
+"I shall be in my picture-gallery, then; you know where."
+
+The doctor nodded, and went upstairs.
+
+Soames continued to stand, listening.  'By this time to-morrow,' he
+thought, 'I may have her death on my hands.'  No! it was unfair--
+monstrous, to put it that way!  Sullenness dropped on him again,
+and he went up to the gallery.  He stood at the window.  The wind
+was in the north; it was cold, clear; very blue sky, heavy ragged
+white clouds chasing across; the river blue, too, through the
+screen of goldening trees; the woods all rich with colour, glowing,
+burnished-an early autumn.  If it were his own life, would he be
+taking that risk?  'But she'd take the risk of losing me,' he
+thought, 'sooner than lose her child!  She doesn't really love me!'
+What could one expect--a girl and French?  The one thing really
+vital to them both, vital to their marriage and their futures, was
+a child!  'I've been through a lot for this,' he thought, 'I'll
+hold on--hold on.  There's a chance of keeping both--a chance!'
+One kept till things were taken--one naturally kept!  He began
+walking round the gallery.  He had made one purchase lately which
+he knew was a fortune in itself, and he halted before it--a girl
+with dull gold hair which looked like filaments of metal gazing at
+a little golden monster she was holding in her hand.  Even at this
+tortured moment he could just feel the extraordinary nature of the
+bargain he had made--admire the quality of the table, the floor,
+the chair, the girl's figure, the absorbed expression on her face,
+the dull gold filaments of her hair, the bright gold of the little
+monster.  Collecting pictures; growing richer, richer!  What use,
+if....!  He turned his back abruptly on the picture, and went to
+the window.  Some of his doves had flown up from their perches
+round the dovecot, and were stretching their wings in the wind.  In
+the clear sharp sunlight their whiteness almost flashed.  They flew
+far, making a flung-up hieroglyphic against the sky.  Annette fed
+the doves; it was pretty to see her.  They took it out of her hand;
+they knew she was matter-of-fact.  A choking sensation came into
+his throat.  She would not--could nod die!  She was too--too
+sensible; and she was strong, really strong, like her mother, in
+spite of her fair prettiness
+
+It was already growing dark when at last he opened the door, and
+stood listening.  Not a sound!  A milky twilight crept about the
+stairway and the landings below.  He had turned back when a sound
+caught his ear.  Peering down, he saw a black shape moving, and his
+heart stood still.  What was it?  Death?  The shape of Death coming
+from her door?  No! only a maid without cap or apron.  She came to
+the foot of his flight of stairs and said breathlessly:
+
+"The doctor wants to see you, sir."
+
+He ran down.  She stood flat against the wall to let him pass, and
+said:
+
+"Oh, Sir! it's over."
+
+"Over?" said Soames, with a sort of menace; "what d'you mean?"
+
+"It's born, sir."
+
+He dashed up the four steps in front of him, and came suddenly on
+the doctor in the dim passage.  The man was wiping his brow.
+
+"Well?" he said; "quick!"
+
+"Both living; it's all right, I think."
+
+Soames stood quite still, covering his eyes.
+
+"I congratulate you," he heard the doctor say; "it was touch and
+go."
+
+Soames let fall the hand which was covering his face.
+
+"Thanks," he said; "thanks very much.  What is it?"
+
+"Daughter--luckily; a son would have killed her--the head."
+
+A daughter!
+
+"The utmost care of both," he hearts the doctor say, "and we shall
+do.  When does the mother come?"
+
+"To-night, between nine and ten, I hope."
+
+"I'll stay till then.  Do you want to see them?"
+
+"Not now," said Soames; "before you go.  I'll have dinner sent up
+to you."  And he went downstairs.
+
+Relief unspeakable, and yet--a daughter!  It seemed to him unfair.
+To have taken that risk--to have been through this agony--and what
+agony!--for a daughter!  He stood before the blazing fire of wood
+logs in the hall, touching it with his toe and trying to readjust
+himself.  'My father!' he thought.  A bitter disappointment, no
+disguising it!  One never got all one wanted in this life!  And
+there was no other--at least, if there was, it was no use!
+
+While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.
+
+"Come up at once, your father sinking fast.
+--MOTHER."
+
+He read it with a choking sensation.  One would have thought he
+couldn't feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this.
+Half-past seven, a train from Reading at nine, and madame's train,
+if she had caught it, came in at eight-forty--he would meet that,
+and go on.  He ordered the carriage, ate some dinner mechanically,
+and went upstairs.  The doctor came out to him.
+
+"They're sleeping."
+
+"I won't go in," said Soames with relief.  "My father's dying; I
+have to--go up.  Is it all right?"
+
+The doctor's face expressed a kind of doubting admiration.  'If
+they were all as unemotional' he might have been saying.
+
+"Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind.  You'll be down soon?"
+
+"To-morrow," said Soames.  "Here's the address."
+
+The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.
+
+"Good-night!" said Soames abruptly, and turned away.  He put on his
+fur coat.  Death!  It was a chilly business.  He smoked a cigarette
+in the carriage--one of his rare cigarettes.  The night was windy
+and flew on black wings; the carriage lights had to search out the
+way.  His father!  That old, old man!  A comfortless night--to die!
+
+The London train came in just as he reached the station, and Madame
+Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the lamplight,
+came towards the exit with a dressing-bag.
+
+"This all you have?" asked Soames.
+
+"But yes; I had not the time.  How is my little one?"
+
+"Doing well--both.  A girl!"
+
+"A girl!  What joy!  I had a frightful crossing!"
+
+Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing, climbed
+into the brougham.
+
+"And you, mon cher?"
+
+"My father's dying," said Soames between his teeth.  "I'm going up.
+Give my love to Annette."
+
+"Tiens!"  murmured Madame Lamotte; "quel malheur!"
+
+Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train.  'The
+French!'  he thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JAMES IS TOLD
+
+
+A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the
+air and the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the room
+he had not left since the middle of September--and James was in
+deep waters.  A little cold, passing his little strength and flying
+quickly to his lungs.  "He mustn't catch cold," the doctor had
+declared, and he had gone and caught it.  When he first felt it in
+his throat he had said to his nurse--for he had one now--"There, I
+knew how it would be, airing the room like that!"  For a whole day
+he was highly nervous about himself and went in advance of all
+precautions and remedies; drawing every breath with extreme care
+and having his temperature taken every hour.  Emily was not
+alarmed.
+
+But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: "He won't
+have his temperature taken."
+
+Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said
+softly, "How do you feel, James?" holding the thermometer to his
+lips.  James looked up at her.
+
+"What's the good of that?" he murmured huskily; "I don't want to
+know."
+
+Then she was alarmed.  He breathed with difficulty, he looked
+terribly frail, white, with faint red discolorations.  She had 'had
+trouble' with him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been James
+for nearly fifty years; she couldn't remember or imagine life
+without James--James, behind all his fussiness, his pessimism, his
+crusty shell, deeply affectionate, really kind and generous to them
+all!
+
+All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was
+in his eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his
+face which told her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope.
+His very stillness, the way he conserved every little scrap of
+energy, showed the tenacity with which he was fighting.  It touched
+her deeply; and though her face was composed and comfortable in the
+sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks when she was out of it.
+
+About tea-time on the third day--she had just changed her dress,
+keeping her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed
+everything--she saw a difference.  'It's no use; I'm tired,' was
+written plainly across that white face, and when she went up to
+him, he muttered: "Send for Soames."
+
+"Yes, James," she said comfortably; "all right--at once."  And she
+kissed his forehead.  A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it off
+she saw that his eyes looked grateful.  Much upset, and without
+hope now, she sent Soames the telegram.
+
+When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was
+still as a grave.  Warmson's broad face looked almost narrow; he
+took the fur coat with a sort of added care, saying:
+
+"Will you have a glass of wine, sir?"
+
+Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.
+
+Warmson's lips twitched.  "He's asking for you, sir;" and suddenly
+he blew his nose.  "It's a long time, sir," he said, "that I've
+been with Mr. Forsyte--a long time."
+
+Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs.
+This house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never seemed
+to him so warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last pilgrimage
+to his father's room.  It was not his taste; but in its own sub-
+stantial, lincrusta way it was the acme of comfort and security.
+And the night was so dark and windy; the grave so cold and lonely
+
+He paused outside the door.  No sound came from within.  He turned
+the handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived.  The
+light was shaded.  His mother and Winifred were sitting on the far
+side of the bed; the nurse was moving away from the near side where
+was an empty chair.  'For me!'  thought Soames.  As he moved from
+the door his mother and sister rose, but he signed with his hand
+and they sat down again.  He went up to the chair and stood looking
+at his father.  James' breathing was as if strangled; his eyes were
+closed.  And in Soames, looking on his father so worn and white and
+wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there rose a
+passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel, inexorable
+Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body, slowly
+pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who was
+dearest to him in the world.  His father, of all men, had lived a
+careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward--to
+have life slowly, painfully squeezed out of him!  And, without
+knowing that he spoke, he said: "It's cruel!"
+
+He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face towards
+the bed.  Women!  They put up with things so much.  better than
+men.  He took a step nearer to his father.  For three days James
+had not been shaved, and his lips and chin were covered with hair,
+hardly more snowy than his forehead.  It softened his face, gave it
+a queer look already not of this world.  His eyes opened.  Soames
+went quite close and bent over.  The lips moved.
+
+"Here I am, Father:"
+
+"Um--what--what news?  They never tell...."  the voice died, and a
+flood of emotion made Soames' face work so that he could not speak.
+Tell him?--yes.  But what?  He made a great effort, got his lips
+together, and said:
+
+"Good news, dear, good--Annette, a son."
+
+"Ah!"  It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,
+triumphant--like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants.  The
+eyes closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again.
+Soames recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down.  The lie he had
+told, based, as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct that
+after death James would not know the truth, had taken away all
+power of feeling for the moment.  His arm brushed against
+something.  It was his father's naked foot.  In the struggle to
+breathe he had pushed it out from under the clothes.  Soames took
+it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white, very cold.
+What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder soon!
+He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his father's
+laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose again within
+him.  A little sob, quickly smothered, came from Winifred, but his
+mother sat unmoving with her eyes fixed on James.  Soames signed to
+the nurse.
+
+"Where's the doctor?" he whispered.
+
+"He's been sent for."
+
+"Can't you do anything to ease his breathing?"
+
+"Only an injection; and he can't stand it.  The doctor said, while
+he was fighting...."
+
+"He's not fighting," whispered Soames, "he's being slowly
+smothered.  It's awful."
+
+James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying.
+Soames rose and bent over him.  James feebly moved his two hands,
+and Soames took them.
+
+"He wants to be pulled up," whispered the nurse.
+
+Soames pulled.  He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of
+anger passed over James' face.  The nurse plumped the pillows.
+Soames laid the hands down, and bending over kissed his father's
+forehead.  As he was raising himself again, James' eyes bent on him
+a look which seemed to come from the very depths of what was left
+within.  'I'm done, my boy,' it seemed to say, 'take care of them,
+take care of yourself; take care--I leave it all to you.'
+
+"Yes, Yes," Soames whispered, "yes, yes."
+
+Behind him the nurse did he knew, not what, for his father made a
+tiny movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and
+almost at once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay very
+still.  The strained expression on his face passed, a curious white
+tranquillity took its place.  His eyelids quivered, rested; the
+whole face rested; at ease.  Only by the faint puffing of his lips
+could they tell that he was breathing.  Soames sank back on his
+chair, and fell to cherishing the foot again.  He heard the nurse
+quietly crying over there by the fire; curious that she, a
+stranger, should be the only one of them who cried!  He heard the
+quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames.  One more old Forsyte
+going to his long rest--wonderful, they were!--wonderful how he had
+held on!  His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on
+the sight of James' lips.  But Soames bent sideways over the feet,
+warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder though
+they grew.  Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful sound such
+as he had never heard, was coming from his father's lips, as if an
+outraged heart had broken with a long moan.  What a strong heart,
+to have uttered that farewell!  It ceased.  Soaines looked into the
+face.  No motion; no breath!  Dead!  He kissed the brow, turned
+round and went out of the room.  He ran upstairs to the bedroom,
+his old bedroom, still kept for him; flung himself face down on the
+bed, and broke into sobs which he stilled with the pillow....
+
+A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room.  James
+lay alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with the
+gravity on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the worn
+fine gravity of old coins.
+
+Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room
+with windows thrown open to the London night.
+
+"Good-bye!" he whispered, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HIS
+
+
+He had much to see to, that night and all next day.  A telegram at
+breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last
+train back to Reading, with Emily's kiss on his forehead and in his
+ears her words:
+
+"I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy."
+
+He reached his house at midnight.  The weather had changed, was
+mild again, as though, having finished its work and sent a Forsyte
+to his last account, it could relax.  A second telegram, received
+at dinner-time, had confirmed the good news of Annette, and,
+instead of going in, Soames passed down through the garden in the
+moonlight to his houseboat.  He could sleep there quite well.
+Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in his fur coat and fell
+asleep.  He woke soon after dawn and went on deck.  He stood
+against the rail, looking west where the river swept round in a
+wide curve under the woods.  In Soames, appreciation of natural
+beauty was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense of
+grievance if it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilised,
+by his researches among landscape painting.  But dawn has power to
+fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred.  It
+was another world from the river he knew, under that remote cool
+light; a world into which man had not entered, an unreal world,
+like some strange shore sighted by discovery.  Its colour was not
+the colour of convention, was hardly colour at all; its shapes were
+brooding yet distinct; its silence stunning; it had no scent.  Why
+it should move him he could not tell, unless it were that he felt
+so alone in it, bare of all relationship and all possessions.  Into
+such a world his father might be voyaging, for all resemblance it
+had to the world he had left.  And Soames took refuge from it in
+wondering what painter could have done it justice.  The white-grey
+water was like--like the belly of a fish!  Was it possible that
+this world on which he looked was all private property, except the
+water--and even that was tapped!  No tree, no shrub, not a blade of
+grass, not a bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned.
+And once on a time all this was jungle and marsh and water, and
+weird creatures roamed and sported without human cognizance to give
+them names; rotting luxuriance had rioted where those tall, care-
+fully planted woods came down to the water, and marsh-misted reeds
+on that far side had covered all the pasture.  Well! they had got
+it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it, and stowed it in
+lawyers' offices.  And a good thing too!  But once in a way, as
+now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and whisper
+to any human who chanced to be awake: 'Out of my unowned loneliness
+you all came, into it some day you will all return.'
+
+And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world-new
+to him and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of
+its past--went down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp.  When he
+had drunk it, he took out writing materials and wrote two
+paragraphs:
+
+"On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James Forsyte,
+in his ninety-first year.  Funeral at noon on the 24th at Highgate.
+No flowers by request."
+
+"On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife of
+Soames Forsyte, of a daughter."  And underneath on the
+blottingpaper he traced the word "son."
+
+It was eight o'clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went
+across to the house.  Bushes across the river stood round and
+bright-coloured out of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue
+and straight; and his doves cooed, preening their feathers in the
+sunlight.
+
+He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh
+linen and dark clothes.
+
+Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.
+
+She looked at his clothes, said, "Don't tell me!" and pressed his
+hand.  "Annette is prettee well.  But the doctor say she can never
+have no more children.  You knew that?" Soames nodded.  "It's a
+pity.  Mais la petite est adorable.  Du cafe?"
+
+Soames got away from her as soon as he could.  She offended him--
+solid, matter-of-fact, quick, clear--French.  He could not bear her
+vowels, her 'r's'; he resented the way she had looked at him, as if
+it were his fault that Annette could never bear him a son!  His
+fault!  He even resented her cheap adoration of the daughter he had
+not yet seen.
+
+Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!
+
+One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first moment.
+On the contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from it--
+fastidious possessor that he was.  He was afraid of what Annette
+was thinking of him, author of her agonies, afraid of the look of
+the baby, afraid of showing his disappointment with the present
+and--the future.
+
+He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he
+could screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the
+door of their room.
+
+Madame Lamotte opened it.
+
+"Ah!  At last you come!  Elle vous attend!"  She passed him, and
+Soames went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his
+eyes furtive.
+
+Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there.  The baby was
+hidden away somewhere; he could not see it.  He went up to the bed,
+and with sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.
+
+"Here you are then, Soames," she said.  "I am not so bad now.  But
+I suffered terribly, terribly.  I am glad I cannot have any more.
+Oh! how I suffered!"
+
+Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of
+sympathy, absolutely would not come; the thought passed through
+him: 'An English girl wouldn't have said that!'  At this moment he
+knew with certainty that he would never be near to her in spirit
+and in truth, nor she to him.  He had collected her--that was all!
+And Jolyon's words came rushing into his mind: "I should imagine
+you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."  Well, he had
+got it out!  Had he got it in again?
+
+"We must feed you up," he said, "you'll soon be strong."
+
+"Don't you want to see baby, Soames?  She is asleep."
+
+"Of course," said Soames, "very much."
+
+He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood
+staring.  For the first moment what he saw was much what he had
+expected to see--a baby.  But as he stared and the baby breathed
+and made little sleeping movements with its tiny features, it
+seemed to assume an individual shape, grew to be like a picture, a
+thing he would know again; not repulsive, strangely bud-like and
+touching.  It had dark hair.  He touched it with his finger, he
+wanted to see its eyes.  They opened, they were dark--whether blue
+or brown he could not tell.  The eyes winked, stared, they had a
+sort of sleepy depth in them.  And suddenly his heart felt queer,
+warm, as if elated.
+
+"Ma petite fleur!" Annette said softly.
+
+"Fleur," repeated Soames: "Fleur! we'll call her that."
+
+The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.
+
+By God! this--this thing was his!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Summer of a Forsyte and In
+Chancery, by John Galsworthy
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