Project Gutenberg Etext Indian Summer of a Forsyte, by Galsworthy
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Title:  Indian Summer of a Forsyte

Author:  John Galsworthy

April, 2001  [Etext #2594]


Project Gutenberg Etext Indian Summer of a Forsyte, by Galsworthy
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[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
VOLUME II



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
430 odd a year, clear of income tax.  This was but the third time
he had seen his cousin Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his
wife, of which he was not quite sure.  He remembered having seen
her sitting in the Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney--a
passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of Titian's 'Heavenly
Love,' and again, when, charged by his father, he had gone to
Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's death was
known.  He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing
from wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the
compassion he had felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are
not at home!" and the slam of the front door.

This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from
that warp of wild hope and despair.  Looking at her, he thought:
'Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!'  And the
strange story of his father's Indian summer became slowly clear to
him.  She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes.
"He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don't know why.  He looked so
beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the tree; it was
I who first came on him sitting there, you know.  Such a lovely
day.  I don't think an end could have been happier.  We should all
like to go out like that."  'Quite right 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

