Part + 

III + 

I + 

Mrs. Macander’s Evidence + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you please leave my room?” + 

“Will you treat me as your husband?” + 

“No.” + 

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

“Do!” + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The end of September began to witness their several returns. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II + 

Night in the Park + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III + 

Meeting at the Botanical + 

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

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

An art critic who had recently been looking at his work had delivered himself as follows: + 

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

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

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

“You see, dear?” + 

“I do not,” she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a little foreign accent; “your style has originality.” + 

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

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

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

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

Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it fluttered a goodbye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig. + 

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

And so young Jolyon found them. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a silence. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And old Jolyon mused. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV + 

Voyage Into the Inferno + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, he did not regret it. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soames used the underground again in going home. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was nearly seven when he heard her come in. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bosinney spun round. + 

“Who are you? What do you want?” + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V + 

The Trial + 

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

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

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

It was not long before James addressed his son. + 

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

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

“How much?” he asked. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Come, come!” + 

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

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

“Yes!” + 

“What do you say it means?” + 

“What it says!” + 

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

“Yes.” + 

“You are not an Irishman?” + 

“No.” + 

“Are you a well-educated man?” + 

“Yes.” + 

“And yet you persist in that statement?” + 

“Yes.” + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He delivered judgment in the following words: + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He wasn’t there⁠—now why?” + 

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

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

It was Timothy. + 

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

VI + 

Soames Breaks the News + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Without waiting for any reply, he left the room. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir.” + 

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

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

Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher. + 

Mrs. Septimus Small. + 

Mrs. Baynes. + 

Mr. Solomon Thornworthy. + 

Lady Bellis. + 

Miss Hermione Bellis. + 

Miss Winifred Bellis. + 

Miss Ella Bellis. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The butler was sorry. + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s I⁠—Soames!” + 

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

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

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

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

Soames shook his head. + 

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

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

“My dear boy! My dear boy!” + 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At ten o’clock Soames left; twice in reply to questions, he had said that Irene was not well; he felt he could no longer trust himself. His mother kissed him with her large soft kiss, and he pressed her hand, a flush of warmth in his cheeks. He walked away in the cold wind, which whistled desolately round the corners of the streets, under a sky of clear steel-blue, alive with stars; he noticed neither their frosty greeting, nor the crackle of the curled-up plane-leaves, nor the night-women hurrying in their shabby furs, nor the pinched faces of vagabonds at street corners. Winter was come! But Soames hastened home, oblivious; his hands trembled as he took the late letters from the gilt wire cage into which they had been thrust through the slit in the door. + 

None from Irene! + 

He went into the dining-room; the fire was bright there, his chair drawn up to it, slippers ready, spirit case, and carven cigarette box on the table; but after staring at it all for a minute or two, he turned out the light and went upstairs. There was a fire too in his dressing-room, but her room was dark and cold. It was into this room that Soames went. + 

He made a great illumination with candles, and for a long time continued pacing up and down between the bed and the door. He could not get used to the thought that she had really left him, and as though still searching for some message, some reason, some reading of all the mystery of his married life, he began opening every recess and drawer. + 

There were her dresses; he had always liked, indeed insisted, that she should be well-dressed⁠—she had taken very few; two or three at most, and drawer after drawer; full of linen and silk things, was untouched. + 

Perhaps after all it was only a freak, and she had gone to the seaside for a few days’ change. If only that were so, and she were really coming back, he would never again do as he had done that fatal night before last, never again run that risk⁠—though it was her duty, her duty as a wife; though she did belong to him⁠—he would never again run that risk; she was evidently not quite right in her head! + 

He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels; it was not locked, and came open as he pulled; the jewel box had the key in it. This surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to be empty. He opened it. + 

It was far from empty. Divided, in little green velvet compartments, were all the things he had given her, even her watch, and stuck into the recess that contained the watch was a three-cornered note addressed “Soames Forsyte,” in Irene’s handwriting: + 

“I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given me.” And that was all. + 

He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls, at the little flat gold watch with a great diamond set in sapphires, at the chains and rings, each in its nest, and the tears rushed up in his eyes and dropped upon them. + 

Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she had done, brought home to him like this the inner significance of her act. For the moment, perhaps, he understood nearly all there was to understand⁠—understood that she loathed him, that she had loathed him for years, that for all intents and purposes they were like people living in different worlds, that there was no hope for him, never had been; even, that she had suffered⁠—that she was to be pitied. + 

In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him⁠—forgot himself, his interests, his property⁠—was capable of almost anything; was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and unpractical. + 

Such moments pass quickly. + 

And as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness, he got up, locked the box, and slowly, almost trembling, carried it with him into the other room. + 

VII + 

June’s Victory + 

June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of the journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at first puzzled old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it with all the promptitude and resolute tenacity of her character. + 

She will always remember best in her life that morning when at last she saw amongst the reliable Cause List of the Times newspaper, under the heading of Court XIII, Mr. Justice Bentham, the case of Forsyte v. Bosinney. + 

Like a gambler who stakes his last piece of money, she had prepared to hazard her all upon this throw; it was not her nature to contemplate defeat. How, unless with the instinct of a woman in love, she knew that Bosinney’s discomfiture in this action was assured, cannot be told⁠—on this assumption, however, she laid her plans, as upon a certainty. + 

Half past eleven found her at watch in the gallery of Court XIII, and there she remained till the case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was over. Bosinney’s absence did not disquiet her; she had felt instinctively that he would not defend himself. At the end of the judgment she hastened down, and took a cab to his rooms. + 

She passed the open street-door and the offices on the three lower floors without attracting notice; not till she reached the top did her difficulties begin. + 

Her ring was not answered; she had now to make up her mind whether she would go down and ask the caretaker in the basement to let her in to await Mr. Bosinney’s return, or remain patiently outside the door, trusting that no one would come up. She decided on the latter course. + 

A quarter of an hour had passed in freezing vigil on the landing, before it occurred to her that Bosinney had been used to leave the key of his rooms under the doormat. She looked and found it there. For some minutes she could not decide to make use of it; at last she let herself in and left the door open that anyone who came might see she was there on business. + 

This was not the same June who had paid the trembling visit five months ago; those months of suffering and restraint had made her less sensitive; she had dwelt on this visit so long, with such minuteness, that its terrors were discounted beforehand. She was not there to fail this time, for if she failed no one could help her. + 

Like some mother beast on the watch over her young, her little quick figure never stood still in that room, but wandered from wall to wall, from window to door, fingering now one thing, now another. There was dust everywhere, the room could not have been cleaned for weeks, and June, quick to catch at anything that should buoy up her hope, saw in it a sign that he had been obliged, for economy’s sake, to give up his servant. + 

She looked into the bedroom; the bed was roughly made, as though by the hand of man. Listening intently, she darted in, and peered into his cupboards. A few shirts and collars, a pair of muddy boots⁠—the room was bare even of garments. + 

She stole back to the sitting-room, and now she noticed the absence of all the little things he had set store by. The clock that had been his mother’s, the field-glasses that had hung over the sofa; two really valuable old prints of Harrow, where his father had been at school, and last, not least, the piece of Japanese pottery she herself had given him. All were gone; and in spite of the rage roused within her championing soul at the thought that the world should treat him thus, their disappearance augured happily for the success of her plan. + 

It was while looking at the spot where the piece of Japanese pottery had stood that she felt a strange certainty of being watched, and, turning, saw Irene in the open doorway. + 

The two stood gazing at each other for a minute in silence; then June walked forward and held out her hand. Irene did not take it. + 

When her hand was refused, June put it behind her. Her eyes grew steady with anger; she waited for Irene to speak; and thus waiting, took in, with who-knows-what rage of jealousy, suspicion, and curiosity, every detail of her friend’s face and dress and figure. + 

Irene was clothed in her long grey fur; the travelling cap on her head left a wave of gold hair visible above her forehead. The soft fullness of the coat made her face as small as a child’s. + 

Unlike June’s cheeks, her cheeks had no colour in them, but were ivory white and pinched as if with cold. Dark circles lay round her eyes. In one hand she held a bunch of violets. + 

She looked back at June, no smile on her lips; and with those great dark eyes fastened on her, the girl, for all her startled anger, felt something of the old spell. + 

She spoke first, after all. + 

“What have you come for?” But the feeling that she herself was being asked the same question, made her add: “This horrible case. I came to tell him⁠—he has lost it.” + 

Irene did not speak, her eyes never moved from June’s face, and the girl cried: + 

“Don’t stand there as if you were made of stone!” + 

Irene laughed: “I wish to God I were!” + 

But June turned away: “Stop!” she cried, “don’t tell me! I don’t want to hear! I don’t want to hear what you’ve come for. I don’t want to hear!” And like some uneasy spirit, she began swiftly walking to and fro. Suddenly she broke out: + 

“I was here first. We can’t both stay here together!” + 

On Irene’s face a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker of firelight. She did not move. And then it was that June perceived under the softness and immobility of this figure something desperate and resolved; something not to be turned away, something dangerous. She tore off her hat, and, putting both hands to her brow, pressed back the bronze mass of her hair. + 

“You have no right here!” she cried defiantly. + 

Irene answered: “I have no right anywhere!” + 

“What do you mean?” + 

“I have left Soames. You always wanted me to!” + 

June put her hands over her ears. + 

“Don’t! I don’t want to hear anything⁠—I don’t want to know anything. It’s impossible to fight with you! What makes you stand like that? Why don’t you go?” + 

Irene’s lips moved; she seemed to be saying: “Where should I go?” + 

June turned to the window. She could see the face of a clock down in the street. It was nearly four. At any moment he might come! She looked back across her shoulder, and her face was distorted with anger. + 

But Irene had not moved; in her gloved hands she ceaselessly turned and twisted the little bunch of violets. + 

The tears of rage and disappointment rolled down June’s cheeks. + 

“How could you come?” she said. “You have been a false friend to me!” + 

Again Irene laughed. June saw that she had played a wrong card, and broke down. + 

“Why have you come?” she sobbed. “You’ve ruined my life, and now you want to ruin his!” + 

Irene’s mouth quivered; her eyes met June’s with a look so mournful that the girl cried out in the midst of her sobbing, “No, no!” + 

But Irene’s head bent till it touched her breast. She turned, and went quickly out, hiding her lips with the little bunch of violets. + 

June ran to the door. She heard the footsteps going down and down. She called out: “Come back, Irene! Come back!” + 

The footsteps died away.⁠ ⁠… + 

Bewildered and torn, the girl stood at the top of the stairs. Why had Irene gone, leaving her mistress of the field? What did it mean? Had she really given him up to her? Or had she⁠—? And she was the prey of a gnawing uncertainty.⁠ ⁠… Bosinney did not come.⁠ ⁠… + 

About six o’clock that afternoon old Jolyon returned from Wistaria Avenue, where now almost every day he spent some hours, and asked if his granddaughter were upstairs. On being told that she had just come in, he sent up to her room to request her to come down and speak to him. + 

He had made up his mind to tell her that he was reconciled with her father. In future bygones must be bygones. He would no longer live alone, or practically alone, in this great house; he was going to give it up, and take one in the country for his son, where they could all go and live together. If June did not like this, she could have an allowance and live by herself. It wouldn’t make much difference to her, for it was a long time since she had shown him any affection. + 

But when June came down, her face was pinched and piteous; there was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes. She snuggled up in her old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said compared but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured statement he had thought out with much care. His heart felt sore, as the great heart of a mother-bird feels sore when its youngling flies and bruises its wing. His words halted, as though he were apologizing for having at last deviated from the path of virtue, and succumbed, in defiance of sounder principles, to his more natural instincts. + 

He seemed nervous lest, in thus announcing his intentions, he should be setting his granddaughter a bad example; and now that he came to the point, his way of putting the suggestion that, if she didn’t like it, she could live by herself and lump it, was delicate in the extreme. + 

“And if, by any chance, my darling,” he said, “you found you didn’t get on⁠—with them, why, I could make that all right. You could have what you liked. We could find a little flat in London where you could set up, and I could be running to continually. But the children,” he added, “are dear little things!” + 

Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation of changed policy, his eyes twinkled. “This’ll astonish Timothy’s weak nerves. That precious young thing will have something to say about this, or I’m a Dutchman!” + 

June had not yet spoken. Perched thus on the arm of his chair, with her head above him, her face was invisible. But presently he felt her warm cheek against his own, and knew that, at all events, there was nothing very alarming in her attitude towards his news. He began to take courage. + 

“You’ll like your father,” he said⁠—“an amiable chap. Never was much push about him, but easy to get on with. You’ll find him artistic and all that.” + 

And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so watercolour drawings all carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his son was going to become a man of property he did not think them quite such poor things as heretofore. + 

“As to your⁠—your stepmother,” he said, using the word with some little difficulty, “I call her a refined woman⁠—a bit of a Mrs. Gummidge, I shouldn’t wonder⁠—but very fond of Jo. And the children,” he repeated⁠—indeed, this sentence ran like music through all his solemn self-justification⁠—“are sweet little things!” + 

If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love for little children, for the young and weak, which in the past had made him desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the cycle rolled, was taking him from her. + 

But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked impatiently: “Well, what do you say?” + 

June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale. She thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any difficulty, and she did not care a bit what people thought. + 

Old Jolyon wriggled. H’m! then people would think! He had thought that after all these years perhaps they wouldn’t! Well, he couldn’t help it! Nevertheless, he could not approve of his granddaughter’s way of putting it⁠—she ought to mind what people thought! + 

Yet he said nothing. His feelings were too mixed, too inconsistent for expression. + 

No⁠—went on June⁠—she did not care; what business was it of theirs? There was only one thing⁠—and with her cheek pressing against his knee, old Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle: As he was going to buy a house in the country, would he not⁠—to please her⁠—buy that splendid house of Soames’ at Robin Hill? It was finished, it was perfectly beautiful, and no one would live in it now. They would all be so happy there. + 

Old Jolyon was on the alert at once. Wasn’t the “man of property” going to live in his new house, then? He never alluded to Soames now but under this title. + 

“No”⁠—June said⁠—“he was not; she knew that he was not!” + 

How did she know? + 

She could not tell him, but she knew. She knew nearly for certain! It was most unlikely; circumstances had changed! Irene’s words still rang in her head: “I have left Soames. Where should I go?” + 

But she kept silence about that. + 

If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched claim that ought never to have been made on Phil! It would be the very best thing for everybody, and everything⁠—everything might come straight. + 

And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close. + 

But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the judicial look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs. He asked: What did she mean? There was something behind all this⁠—had she been seeing Bosinney? + 

June answered: “No; but I have been to his rooms.” + 

“Been to his rooms? Who took you there?” + 

June faced him steadily. “I went alone. He has lost that case. I don’t care whether it was right or wrong. I want to help him; and I will!” + 

Old Jolyon asked again: “Have you seen him?” His glance seemed to pierce right through the girl’s eyes into her soul. + 

Again June answered: “No; he was not there. I waited, but he did not come.” + 

Old Jolyon made a movement of relief. She had risen and looked down at him; so slight, and light, and young, but so fixed, and so determined; and disturbed, vexed, as he was, he could not frown away that fixed look. The feeling of being beaten, of the reins having slipped, of being old and tired, mastered him. + 

“Ah!” he said at last, “you’ll get yourself into a mess one of these days, I can see. You want your own way in everything.” + 

Visited by one of his strange bursts of philosophy, he added: “Like that you were born; and like that you’ll stay until you die!” + 

And he, who in his dealings with men of business, with Boards, with Forsytes of all descriptions, with such as were not Forsytes, had always had his own way, looked at his indomitable grandchild sadly⁠—for he felt in her that quality which above all others he unconsciously admired. + 

“Do you know what they say is going on?” he said slowly. + 

June crimsoned. + 

“Yes⁠—no! I know⁠—and I don’t know⁠—I don’t care!” and she stamped her foot. + 

“I believe,” said old Jolyon, dropping his eyes, “that you’d have him if he were dead!” + 

There was a long silence before he spoke again. + 

“But as to buying this house⁠—you don’t know what you’re talking about!” + 

June said that she did. She knew that he could get it if he wanted. He would only have to give what it cost. + 

“What it cost! You know nothing about it. I won’t go to Soames⁠—I’ll have nothing more to do with that young man.” + 

“But you needn’t; you can go to Uncle James. If you can’t buy the house, will you pay his lawsuit claim? I know he is terribly hard up⁠—I’ve seen it. You can stop it out of my money!” + 

A twinkle came into old Jolyon’s eyes. + 

“Stop it out of your money! A pretty way. And what will you do, pray, without your money?” + 

But secretly, the idea of wresting the house from James and his son had begun to take hold of him. He had heard on Forsyte ’Change much comment, much rather doubtful praise of this house. It was “too artistic,” but a fine place. To take from the “man of property” that on which he had set his heart, would be a crowning triumph over James, practical proof that he was going to make a man of property of Jo, to put him back in his proper position, and there to keep him secure. Justice once for all on those who had chosen to regard his son as a poor, penniless outcast. + 

He would see, he would see! It might be out of the question; he was not going to pay a fancy price, but if it could be done, why, perhaps he would do it! + 

And still more secretly he knew that he could not refuse her. + 

But he did not commit himself. He would think it over⁠—he said to June. + 

VIII + 

Bosinney’s Departure + 

Old Jolyon was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that he would have continued to think over the purchase of the house at Robin Hill, had not June’s face told him that he would have no peace until he acted. + 

At breakfast next morning she asked him what time she should order the carriage. + 

“Carriage!” he said, with some appearance of innocence; “what for? I’m not going out!” + 

She answered: “If you don’t go early, you won’t catch Uncle James before he goes into the City.” + 

“James! what about your Uncle James?” + 

“The house,” she replied, in such a voice that he no longer pretended ignorance. + 

“I’ve not made up my mind,” he said. + 

“You must! You must! Oh! Gran⁠—think of me!” + 

Old Jolyon grumbled out: “Think of you⁠—I’m always thinking of you, but you don’t think of yourself; you don’t think what you’re letting yourself in for. Well, order the carriage at ten!” + 

At a quarter past he was placing his umbrella in the stand at Park Lane⁠—he did not choose to relinquish his hat and coat; telling Warmson that he wanted to see his master, he went, without being announced, into the study, and sat down. + 

James was still in the dining-room talking to Soames, who had come round again before breakfast. On hearing who his visitor was, he muttered nervously: “Now, what’s he want, I wonder?” + 

He then got up. + 

“Well,” he said to Soames, “don’t you go doing anything in a hurry. The first thing is to find out where she is⁠—I should go to Stainer’s about it; they’re the best men, if they can’t find her, nobody can.” And suddenly moved to strange softness, he muttered to himself, “Poor little thing, I can’t tell what she was thinking about!” and went out blowing his nose. + 

Old Jolyon did not rise on seeing his brother, but held out his hand, and exchanged with him the clasp of a Forsyte. + 

James took another chair by the table, and leaned his head on his hand. + 

“Well,” he said, “how are you? We don’t see much of you nowadays!” + 

Old Jolyon paid no attention to the remark. + 

“How’s Emily?” he asked; and waiting for no reply, went on: “I’ve come to see you about this affair of young Bosinney’s. I’m told that new house of his is a white elephant.” + 

“I don’t know anything about a white elephant,” said James, “I know he’s lost his case, and I should say he’ll go bankrupt.” + 

Old Jolyon was not slow to seize the opportunity this gave him. + 

“I shouldn’t wonder a bit!” he agreed; “and if he goes bankrupt, the ‘man of property’⁠—that is, Soames’ll be out of pocket. Now, what I was thinking was this: If he’s not going to live there.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Seeing both surprise and suspicion in James’ eye, he quickly went on: “I don’t want to know anything; I suppose Irene’s put her foot down⁠—it’s not material to me. But I’m thinking of a house in the country myself, not too far from London, and if it suited me I don’t say that I mightn’t look at it, at a price.” + 

James listened to this statement with a strange mixture of doubt, suspicion, and relief, merging into a dread of something behind, and tinged with the remains of his old undoubted reliance upon his elder brother’s good faith and judgment. There was anxiety, too, as to what old Jolyon could have heard and how he had heard it; and a sort of hopefulness arising from the thought that if June’s connection with Bosinney were completely at an end, her grandfather would hardly seem anxious to help the young fellow. Altogether he was puzzled; as he did not like either to show this, or to commit himself in any way, he said: + 

“They tell me you’re altering your will in favour of your son.” + 

He had not been told this; he had merely added the fact of having seen old Jolyon with his son and grandchildren to the fact that he had taken his will away from Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte. The shot went home. + 

“Who told you that?” asked old Jolyon. + 

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said James; “I can’t remember names⁠—I know somebody told me Soames spent a lot of money on this house; he’s not likely to part with it except at a good price.” + 

“Well,” said old Jolyon, “if he thinks I’m going to pay a fancy price, he’s mistaken. I’ve not got the money to throw away that he seems to have. Let him try and sell it at a forced sale, and see what he’ll get. It’s not every man’s house, I hear!” + 

James, who was secretly also of this opinion, answered: “It’s a gentleman’s house. Soames is here now if you’d like to see him.” + 

“No,” said old Jolyon, “I haven’t got as far as that; and I’m not likely to, I can see that very well if I’m met in this manner!” + 

James was a little cowed; when it came to the actual figures of a commercial transaction he was sure of himself, for then he was dealing with facts, not with men; but preliminary negotiations such as these made him nervous⁠—he never knew quite how far he could go. + 

“Well,” he said, “I know nothing about it. Soames, he tells me nothing; I should think he’d entertain it⁠—it’s a question of price.” + 

“Oh!” said old Jolyon, “don’t let him make a favour of it!” He placed his hat on his head in dudgeon. + 

The door was opened and Soames came in. + 

“There’s a policeman out here,” he said with his half smile, “for Uncle Jolyon.” + 

Old Jolyon looked at him angrily, and James said: “A policeman? I don’t know anything about a policeman. But I suppose you know something about him,” he added to old Jolyon with a look of suspicion: “I suppose you’d better see him!” + 

In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked up by James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square. “You’ll find my brother in there,” said James. + 

The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap, and entered the study. + 

James saw him go in with a strange sensation. + 

“Well,” he said to Soames, “I suppose we must wait and see what he wants. Your uncle’s been here about the house!” + 

He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest. + 

“Now what does he want?” he murmured again. + 

“Who?” replied Soames: “the Inspector? They sent him round from Stanhope Gate, that’s all I know. That ‘nonconformist’ of Uncle Jolyon’s has been pilfering, I shouldn’t wonder!” + 

But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease. + 

At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in. He walked up to the table, and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long white moustaches. James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he had never seen his brother look like this. + 

Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly: + 

“Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed.” + 

Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down at him with his deep eyes: + 

“There’s⁠—some⁠—talk⁠—of⁠—suicide,” he said. + 

James’ jaw dropped. “Suicide! What should he do that for?” + 

Old Jolyon answered sternly: “God knows, if you and your son don’t!” + 

But James did not reply. + 

For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had bitter experiences. The passerby, who sees them wrapped in cloaks of custom, wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that such black shadows had fallen on their roads. To every man of great age⁠—to Sir Walter Bentham himself⁠—the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the anteroom of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope. To Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard. Oh! it is hard! Seldom⁠—perhaps never⁠—can they achieve, it; and yet, how near have they not sometimes been! + 

So even with James! Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke out: “Why I saw it in the paper yesterday: ‘Run over in the fog!’ They didn’t know his name!” He turned from one face to the other in his confusion of soul; but instinctively all the time he was rejecting that rumour of suicide. He dared not entertain this thought, so against his interest, against the interest of his son, of every Forsyte. He strove against it; and as his nature ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not with safety accept, so gradually he overcame this fear. It was an accident! It must have been! + 

Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie. + 

“Death was instantaneous. He lay all day yesterday at the hospital. There was nothing to tell them who he was. I am going there now; you and your son had better come too.” + 

No one opposing this command he led the way from the room. + 

The day was still and clear and bright, and driving over to Park Lane from Stanhope Gate, old Jolyon had had the carriage open. Sitting back on the padded cushions, finishing his cigar, he had noticed with pleasure the keen crispness of the air, the bustle of the cabs and people; the strange, almost Parisian, alacrity that the first fine day will bring into London streets after a spell of fog or rain. And he had felt so happy; he had not felt like it for months. His confession to June was off his mind; he had the prospect of his son’s, above all, of his grandchildren’s company in the future⁠—(he had appointed to meet young Jolyon at the Hotch Potch that very morning to⁠ discuss it again); and there was the pleasurable excitement of a coming encounter, a coming victory, over James and the “man of property” in the matter of the house. + 

He had the carriage closed now; he had no heart to look on gaiety; nor was it right that Forsytes should be seen driving with an Inspector of Police. + 

In that carriage the Inspector spoke again of the death: + 

“It was not so very thick⁠—Just there. The driver says the gentleman must have had time to see what he was about, he seemed to walk right into it. It appears that he was very hard up, we found several pawn tickets at his rooms, his account at the bank is overdrawn, and there’s this case in today’s papers;” his cold blue eyes travelled from one to another of the three Forsytes in the carriage. + 

Old Jolyon watching from his corner saw his brother’s face change, and the brooding, worried, look deepen on it. At the Inspector’s words, indeed, all James’ doubts and fears revived. Hard-up⁠—pawn-tickets⁠—an overdrawn account! These words that had all his life been a far-off nightmare to him, seemed to make uncannily real that suspicion of suicide which must on no account be entertained. He sought his son’s eye; but lynx-eyed, taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering look. And to old Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence between them, there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at his side, as though this visit to the dead man’s body was a battle in which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two. And the thought of how to keep June’s name out of the business kept whirring in his brain. James had his son to support him! Why should he not send for Jo? + 

Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message: + 

“Come round at once. I’ve sent the carriage for you.” + 

On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to drive as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr. Jolyon Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at once. If not there yet, he was to wait till he came. + 

He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his umbrella, and stood a moment to get his breath. The Inspector said: “This is the mortuary, sir. But take your time.” + 

In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of sunshine smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by a sheet. With a huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and turned it back. A sightless face gazed up at them, and on either side of that sightless defiant face the three Forsytes gazed down; in each one of them the secret emotions, fears, and pity of his own nature rose and fell like the rising, falling waves of life, whose wash those white walls barred out now forever from Bosinney. And in each one of them the trend of his nature, the odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely, unalterably different from those of every other human being, forced him to a different attitude of thought. Far from the others, yet inscrutably close, each stood thus, alone with death, silent, his eyes lowered. + 

The Inspector asked softly: + 

“You identify the gentleman, sir?” + 

Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded. He looked at his brother opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man, with face dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of Soames white and still by his father’s side. And all that he had felt against those two was gone like smoke in the long white presence of Death. Whence comes it, how comes it⁠—Death? Sudden reverse of all that goes before; blind setting forth on a path that leads to where? Dark quenching of the fire! The heavy, brutal crushing⁠-out that all men must go through, keeping their eyes clear and brave unto the end! Small and of no import, insects though they are! And across old Jolyon’s face there flitted a gleam, for Soames, murmuring to the Inspector, crept noiselessly away. + 

Then suddenly James raised his eyes. There was a queer appeal in that suspicious troubled look: “I know I’m no match for you,” it seemed to say. And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow; then, bending sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned and hurried out. + 

Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body. Who shall tell of what he was thinking? Of himself, when his hair was brown like the hair of that young fellow dead before him? Of himself, with his battle just beginning, the long, long battle he had loved; the battle that was over for this young man almost before it had begun? Of his granddaughter, with her broken hopes? Of that other woman? Of the strangeness, and the pity of it? And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter of that end? Justice! There was no justice for men, for they were ever in the dark! + 

Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of it all! Better to have done with it, like this poor youth.⁠ ⁠… + 

Someone touched him on the arm. + 

A tear started up and wetted his eyelash. “Well,” he said, “I’m no good here. I’d better be going. You’ll come to me as soon as you can, Jo,” and with his head bowed he went away. + 

It was young Jolyon’s turn to take his stand beside the dead man, round whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes breathless, and prostrated. The stroke had fallen too swiftly. + 

The forces underlying every tragedy⁠—forces that take no denial, working through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and fused with a thunderclap, flung out the victim, and flattened to the ground all those that stood around. + 

Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around Bosinney’s body. + 

He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the latter, like a man who does not every day get such a chance, again detailed such facts as were known. + 

“There’s more here, sir, however,” he said, “than meets the eye. I don’t believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself. It’s more likely I think that he was suffering under great stress of mind, and took no notice of things about him. Perhaps you can throw some light on these.” + 

He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table. Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady’s handkerchief, pinned through the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the stone of which had fallen from the socket. A scent of dried violets rose to young Jolyon’s nostrils. + 

“Found in his breast pocket,” said the Inspector; “the name has been cut away!” + 

Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: “I’m afraid I cannot help you!” But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen light up, so tremulous and glad, at Bosinney’s coming! Of her he thought more than of his own daughter, more than of them all⁠—of her with the dark, soft glance, the delicate passive face, waiting for the dead man, waiting even at that moment, perhaps, still and patient in the sunlight. + 

He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father’s house, reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family. The stroke had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree. They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same flash that had stricken down Bosinney. And now the saplings would take its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property. + 

Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon⁠—soundest timber of our land! + 

Concerning the cause of this death⁠—his family would doubtless reject with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising! They would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate. In their hearts they would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution⁠—had not Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and the hearth? And they would talk of “that unfortunate accident of young Bosinney’s,” but perhaps they would not talk⁠—silence might be better! + 

As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver’s account of the accident as of very little value. For no one so madly in love committed suicide for want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of fellow to set much store by a financial crisis. And so he too, rejected this theory of suicide, the dead man’s face rose too clearly before him. Gone in the heyday of his summer⁠—and to believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the full sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon. + 

Then came a vision of Soames’ home as it now was, and must be hereafter. The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny gleam on bare bones with grinning spaces between, the disguising flesh was gone.⁠ ⁠… + 

In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone when his son came in. He looked very wan in his great armchair. And his eyes travelling round the walls with their pictures of still life, and the masterpiece Dutch Fishing-Boats at Sunset seemed as though passing their gaze over his life with its hopes, its gains, its achievements. + 

“Ah! Jo!” he said, “is that you? I’ve told poor little June. But that’s not all of it. Are you going to Soames’? She’s brought it on herself, I suppose; but somehow I can’t bear to think of her, shut up there⁠—and all alone.” And holding up his thin, veined hand, he clenched it. + 

IX + 

Irene’s Return + 

After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the hospital, Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets. + 

The tragic event of Bosinney’s death altered the complexion of everything. There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a minute would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the fact of his wife’s flight to anyone till the inquest was over. + 

That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had taken the first-post letters from the box himself, and, though there had been none from Irene, he had made an opportunity of telling Bilson that her mistress was at the sea; he would probably, he said, be going down himself from Saturday to Monday. This had given him time to breathe, time to leave no stone unturned to find her. + 

But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney’s death⁠—that strange death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to his heart, like lifting a great weight from it⁠—he did not know how to pass his day; and he wandered here and there through the streets, looking at every face he met, devoured by a hundred anxieties. + 

And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his wandering, his prowling, and would never haunt his house again. + 

Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the identity of the dead man, and bought the papers to see what they said. He would stop their mouths if he could, and he went into the City, and was closeted with Boulter for a long time. + 

On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson’s about half past four, he met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to Soames, saying: + 

“Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?” + 

Soames answered stonily: “Yes.” + 

George stared at him. He had never liked Soames; he now held him responsible for Bosinney’s death. Soames had done for him⁠—done for him by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to run amok that fatal afternoon. + 

“The poor fellow,” he was thinking, “was so cracked with jealousy, so cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of the omnibus in that infernal fog.” + 

Soames had done for him! And this judgment was in George’s eyes. + 

“They talk of suicide here,” he said at last. “That cat won’t jump.” + 

Soames shook his head. “An accident,” he muttered. + 

Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his pocket. He could not resist a parting shot. + 

“H’mm! All flourishing at home? Any little Soameses yet?” + 

With a face as white as the steps of Jobson’s, and a lip raised as if snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone.⁠ ⁠… + 

On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife’s gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest. Flinging off his fur coat, he hurried to the drawing-room. + 

The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of cedar-logs burned in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene sitting in her usual corner on the sofa. He shut the door softly, and went towards her. She did not move, and did not seem to see him. + 

“So you’ve come back?” he said. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?” + 

Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it seemed as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her veins; and her eyes, that looked enormous, like the great, wide, startled brown eyes of an owl. + 

Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a strange resemblance to a captive owl, bunched in its soft feathers against the wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no longer any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect. + 

“So you’ve come back,” he repeated. + 

She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over her motionless figure. + 

Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then that he understood. + 

She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to turn, not knowing what she was doing. The sight of her figure, huddled in the fur, was enough. + 

He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew that she had seen the report of his death⁠—perhaps, like himself, had bought a paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read it. + 

She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had pined to be free of⁠—and taking in all the tremendous significance of this, he longed to cry: “Take your hated body, that I love, out of my house! Take away that pitiful white face, so cruel and soft⁠—before I crush it. Get out of my sight; never let me see you again!” + 

And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move away, like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was fighting to awake⁠—rise and go out into the dark and cold, without a thought of him, without so much as the knowledge of his presence. + 

Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, “No; stay there!” And turning away from her, he sat down in his accustomed chair on the other side of the hearth. + 

They sat in silence. + 

And Soames thought: “Why is all this? Why should I suffer so? What have I done? It is not my fault!” + 

Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and dying, whose poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from it, whose poor eyes look at you who have shot it, with a slow, soft, unseeing look, taking farewell of all that is good⁠—of the sun, and the air, and its mate. + 

So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side of the hearth. + 

And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well, seemed to grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no longer. And going out into the hall he flung the door wide, to gulp down the cold air that came in; then without hat or overcoat went out into the Square. + 

Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way towards him, and Soames thought: “Suffering! when will it cease, my suffering?” + 

At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance named Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of “I am master here.” And Soames walked on. + 

From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and Irene had been married were pealing in “practice” for the advent of Christ, the chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic. He felt a craving for strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or rouse him to fury. If only he could burst out of himself, out of this web that for the first time in his life he felt around him. If only he could surrender to the thought: “Divorce her⁠—turn her out! She has forgotten you. Forget her!” + 

If only he could surrender to the thought: “Let her go⁠—she has suffered enough!” + 

If only he could surrender to the desire: “Make a slave of her⁠—she is in your power!” + 

If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: “What does it all matter?” Forget himself for a minute, forget that it mattered what he did, forget that whatever he did he must sacrifice something. + 

If only he could act on an impulse! + 

He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or desire; it was all too serious; too close around him, an unbreakable cage. + 

On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their evening wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with the sound of those church bells. + 

Soames covered his ears. The thought flashed across him that but for a chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead, and she, instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those dying eyes.⁠ ⁠… + 

Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself against them. And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst from Soames’ chest. Then all was still again in the dark, where the houses seemed to stare at him, each with a master and mistress of its own, and a secret story of happiness or sorrow. + 

And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against the light from the hall a man standing with his back turned. Something slid too in his breast, and he stole up close behind. + 

He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair; the Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates arranged along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing there. + 

And sharply he asked: “What is it you want, sir?” + 

The visitor turned. It was young Jolyon. + 

“The door was open,” he said. “Might I see your wife for a minute, I have a message for her?” + 

Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare. + 

“My wife can see no one,” he muttered doggedly. + 

Young Jolyon answered gently: “I shouldn’t keep her a minute.” + 

Soames brushed by him and barred the way. + 

“She can see no one,” he said again. + 

Young Jolyon’s glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames turned. There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes were wild and eager, her lips were parted, her hands outstretched. In the sight of both men that light vanished from her face; her hands dropped to her sides; she stood like stone. + 

Soames spun round, and met his visitor’s eyes, and at the look he saw in them, a sound like a snarl escaped him. He drew his lips back in the ghost of a smile. + 

“This is my house,” he said; “I manage my own affairs. I’ve told you once⁠—I tell you again; we are not at home.” + 

And in young Jolyon’s face he slammed the door. + 