Part + 

II + 

I + 

The Third Generation + 

Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up. Jolly had just changed out of boating flannels and was on his way to the Frying-Pan, to which he had recently been elected. Val had just changed out of riding clothes and was on his way to the fire⁠—a bookmaker’s in Cornmarket. + 

“Hallo!” said Jolly. + 

“Hallo!” replied Val. + 

The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having invited the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen each other again under somewhat exotic circumstances. + 

Over a tailor’s in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged young beings called “minors,” whose inheritances are large, whose parents are dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts are vicious. At nineteen he had commenced one of those careers attractive and inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single bankruptcy is good as a feast. Already famous for having the only roulette table then to be found in Oxford, he was anticipating his expectations at a dazzling rate. He out-crummed Crum, though of a sanguine and rather beefy type which lacked the latter’s fascinating languor. For Val it had been in the nature of baptism to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of confirmation to get back into college, after hours, through a window whose bars were deceptive. Once, during that evening of delight, glancing up from the seductive green before him, he had caught sight, through a cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite. Rouge gagne, impair, et manque! He had not seen him again. + 

“Come in to the Frying-Pan and have tea,” said Jolly, and they went in. + 

A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an unseizable resemblance between these second cousins of the third generations of Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though Jolly’s eyes were darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy. + 

“Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please,” said Jolly. + 

“Have one of my cigarettes?” said Val. “I saw you last night. How did you do?” + 

“I didn’t play.” + 

“I won fifteen quid.” + 

Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had once heard his father make⁠—“When you’re fleeced you’re sick, and when you fleece you’re sorry”⁠—Jolly contented himself with: + 

“Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap. He’s an awful fool.” + 

“Oh! I don’t know,” said Val, as one might speak in defence of a disparaged god; “he’s a pretty good sport.” + 

They exchanged whiffs in silence. + 

“You met my people, didn’t you?” said Jolly. “They’re coming up tomorrow.” + 

Val grew a little red. + 

“Really! I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester November handicap.” + 

“Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races.” + 

“You can’t make any money over them,” said Val. + 

“I hate the ring,” said Jolly; “there’s such a row and stink. I like the paddock.” + 

“I like to back my judgment,” answered Val. + 

Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father’s. + 

“I haven’t got any. I always lose money if I bet.” + 

“You have to buy experience, of course.” + 

“Yes, but it’s all messed-up with doing people in the eye.” + 

“Of course, or they’ll do you⁠—that’s the excitement.” + 

Jolly looked a little scornful. + 

“What do you do with yourself? Row?” + 

“No⁠—ride, and drive about. I’m going to play polo next term, if I can get my granddad to stump up.” + 

“That’s old Uncle James, isn’t it? What’s he like?” + 

“Older than forty hills,” said Val, “and always thinking he’s going to be ruined.” + 

“I suppose my granddad and he were brothers.” + 

“I don’t believe any of that old lot were sportsmen,” said Val; “they must have worshipped money.” + 

“Mine didn’t!” said Jolly warmly. + 

Val flipped the ash off his cigarette. + 

“Money’s only fit to spend,” he said; “I wish the deuce I had more.” + 

Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had inherited from old Jolyon: One didn’t talk about money! And again there was silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered buns. + 

“Where are your people going to stay?” asked Val, elaborately casual. + 

“Rainbow. What do you think of the war?” + 

“Rotten, so far. The Boers aren’t sports a bit. Why don’t they come out into the open?” + 

“Why should they? They’ve got everything against them except their way of fighting. I rather admire them.” + 

“They can ride and shoot,” admitted Val, “but they’re a lousy lot. Do you know Crum?” + 

“Of Merton? Only by sight. He’s in that fast set too, isn’t he? Rather La-di-da and Brummagem.” + 

Val said fixedly: “He’s a friend of mine.” + 

“Oh! Sorry!” And they sat awkwardly staring past each other, having pitched on their pet points of snobbery. For Jolly was forming himself unconsciously on a set whose motto was: + 

“We defy you to bore us. Life isn’t half long enough, and we’re going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine. We are ‘the best’⁠—made of wire and whipcord.” And Val was unconsciously forming himself on a set whose motto was: “We defy you to interest or excite us. We have had every sensation, or if we haven’t, we pretend we have. We are so exhausted with living that no hours are too small for us. We will lose our shirts with equanimity. We have flown fast and are past everything. All is cigarette smoke. Bismillah!” Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the English, was obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the close of a century ideals are mixed. The aristocracy had already in the main adopted the “jumping-Jesus” principle; though here and there one like Crum⁠—who was an “honourable”⁠—stood starkly languid for that gambler’s Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old “dandies” and of “the mashers” in the eighties. And round Crum were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a plutocratic following. + 

But there was between the cousins another far less obvious antipathy⁠—coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which each perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old feud persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed within them by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders. And Jolly, tinkling his teaspoon, was musing: “His tiepin and his waistcoat and his drawl and his betting⁠—good Lord!” + 

And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: “He’s rather a young beast!” + 

“I suppose you’ll be meeting your people?” he said, getting up. “I wish you’d tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.⁠—not that there’s anything much there⁠—if they’d care to come.” + 

“Thanks, I’ll ask them.” + 

“Would they lunch? I’ve got rather a decent scout.” + 

Jolly doubted if they would have time. + 

“You’ll ask them, though?” + 

“Very good of you,” said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not go; but, instinctively polite, he added: “You’d better come and have dinner with us tomorrow.” + 

“Rather. What time?” + 

“Seven-thirty.” + 

“Dress?” + 

“No.” And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them. + 

Holly and her father arrived by a midday train. It was her first visit to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent, looking almost shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful place. After lunch she wandered, examining his household gods with intense curiosity. Jolly’s sitting-room was panelled, and art represented by a set of Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old Jolyon, and by college photographs⁠—of young men, live young men, a little heroic, and to be compared with her memories of Val. Jolyon also scrutinised with care that evidence of his boy’s character and tastes. + 

Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set forth to the river. Holly, between her brother and her father, felt elated when heads were turned and eyes rested on her. That they might see him to the best advantage they left him at the Barge and crossed the river to the towing-path. Slight in build⁠—for of all the Forsytes only old Swithin and George were beefy⁠—Jolly was rowing “Two” in a trial eight. He looked very earnest and strenuous. With pride Jolyon thought him the best-looking boy of the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck by one or two of the others, but would not have said so for the world. The river was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still beautiful with colour. Distinguished peace clung around the old city; Jolyon promised himself a day’s sketching if the weather held. The Eight passed a second time, spurting home along the Barges⁠—Jolly’s face was very set, so as not to show that he was blown. They returned across the river and waited for him. + 

“Oh!” said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, “I had to ask that chap Val Dartie to dine with us tonight. He wanted to give you lunch and show you B.N.C., so I thought I’d better; then you needn’t go. I don’t like him much.” + 

Holly’s rather sallow face had become suffused with pink. + 

“Why not?” + 

“Oh! I don’t know. He seems to me rather showy and bad form. What are his people like, Dad? He’s only a second cousin, isn’t he?” + 

Jolyon took refuge in a smile. + 

“Ask Holly,” he said; “she saw his uncle.” + 

“I liked Val,” Holly answered, staring at the ground before her; “his uncle looked⁠—awfully different.” She stole a glance at Jolly from under her lashes. + 

“Did you ever,” said Jolyon with whimsical intention, “hear our family history, my dears? It’s quite a fairy tale. The first Jolyon Forsyte⁠—at all events the first we know anything of, and that would be your great-great-grandfather⁠—dwelt in the land of Dorset on the edge of the sea, being by profession an ‘agriculturalist,’ as your great-aunt put it, and the son of an agriculturist⁠—farmers, in fact; your grandfather used to call them, ‘Very small beer.’ ” He looked at Jolly to see how his lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly’s malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother’s face. + 

“We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it was before the Industrial Era began. The second Jolyon Forsyte⁠—your great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset Forsyte⁠—built houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children, and migrated to London town. It is known that he drank sherry. We may suppose him representing the England of Napoleon’s wars, and general unrest. The eldest of his six sons was the third Jolyon, your grandfather, my dears⁠—tea merchant and chairman of companies, one of the soundest Englishmen who ever lived⁠—and to me the dearest.” Jolyon’s voice had lost its irony, and his son and daughter gazed at him solemnly, “He was just and tenacious, tender and young at heart. You remember him, and I remember him. Pass to the others! Your great-uncle James, that’s young Val’s grandfather, had a son called Soames⁠—whereby hangs a tale of no love lost, and I don’t think I’ll tell it you. James and the other eight children of Superior Dosset, of whom there are still five alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its principles of trade and individualism at five percent and your money back⁠—if you know what that means. At all events they’ve turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in the course of their long lives. They never did a wild thing⁠—unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe was once swindled at thimblerig, and was called ‘Four-in-Hand Forsyte’ because he drove a pair. Their day is passing, and their type, not altogether for the advantage of the country. They were pedestrian, but they too were sound. I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte⁠—a poor holder of the name⁠—” + 

“No, Dad,” said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand. + 

“Yes,” repeated Jolyon, “a poor specimen, representing, I’m afraid, nothing but the end of the century, unearned income, amateurism, and individual liberty⁠—a different thing from individualism, Jolly. You are the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man, and you open the ball of the new century.” + 

As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly said: “It’s fascinating, Dad.” + 

None of them quite knew what she meant. Jolly was grave. + 

The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for lack of modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-room, in which Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone, when the only guest arrived. Rather as one would touch a moth, Val took her hand. And wouldn’t she wear this “measly flower.” It would look ripping in her hair. He removed a gardenia from his coat. + 

“Oh! No, thank you⁠—I couldn’t!” But she took it and pinned it at her neck, having suddenly remembered that word “showy.” Val’s buttonhole would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like him. Did she realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her presence, and was that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction for her? + 

“I never said anything about our ride, Val.” + 

“Rather not! It’s just between us.” + 

By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too⁠—the wish to make him happy. + 

“Do tell me about Oxford. It must be ever so lovely.” + 

Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked; the lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps. “Only,” he added, “of course I wish I was in town, and could come down and see you.” + 

Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped. + 

“You haven’t forgotten,” he said, suddenly gathering courage, “that we’re going mad-rabbiting together?” + 

Holly smiled. + 

“Oh! That was only make-believe. One can’t do that sort of thing after one’s grown up, you know.” + 

“Dash it! cousins can,” said Val. “Next Long Vac.⁠—it begins in June, you know, and goes on forever⁠—we’ll watch our chance.” + 

But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly shook her head. “It won’t come off,” she murmured. + 

“Won’t it!” said Val fervently; “who’s going to stop it? Not your father or your brother.” + 

At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into Val’s patent leather and Holly’s white satin toes, where it itched and tingled during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness. + 

Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism between the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became unconsciously ironical, which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth. A letter, handed to him after dinner, reduced him to a silence hardly broken till Jolly and Val rose to go. He went out with them, smoking his cigar, and walked with his son to the gates of Christ Church. Turning back, he took out the letter and read it again beneath a lamp. + 

“Dear Jolyon, + 

“Soames came again tonight⁠—my thirty-seventh birthday. You were right, I mustn’t stay here. I’m going tomorrow to the Piedmont Hotel, but I won’t go abroad without seeing you. I feel lonely and downhearted. + 

He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished at the violence of his feelings. What had the fellow said or done? + 

He turned into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of spires and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or dark-shadowed in the strong moonlight. In this very heart of England’s gentility it was difficult to realise that a lonely woman could be importuned or hunted, but what else could her letter mean? Soames must have been pressing her to go back to him again, with public opinion and the Law on his side, too! “Eighteen-ninety-nine!” he thought, gazing at the broken glass shining on the top of a villa garden wall; “But when it comes to property we’re still a heathen people! I’ll go up tomorrow morning. I dare say it’ll be best for her to go abroad.” Yet the thought displeased him. Why should Soames hunt her out of England! Besides, he might follow, and out there she would be still more helpless against the attentions of her own husband! “I must tread warily,” he thought; “that fellow could make himself very nasty. I didn’t like his manner in the cab the other night.” His thoughts turned to his daughter June. Could she help? Once on a time Irene had been her greatest friend, and now she was a lame duck, such as must appeal to June’s nature! He determined to wire to his daughter to meet him at Paddington Station. Retracing his steps towards the Rainbow he questioned his own sensations. Would he be upsetting himself over every woman in like case? No! he would not. The candour of this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had gone up to bed, he sought his own room. But he could not sleep, and sat for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the moonlight on the roofs. + 

Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and below Val’s eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to make Jolly like him better. The scent of the gardenia was strong in her little bedroom, and pleasant to her. + 

And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was gazing at a moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing instead Holly, slim and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire when he first went in. + 

But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand beneath his cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a race against him, while his father was calling from the towpath: “Two! Get your hands away there, bless you!” + 

II + 

Soames Puts It to the Touch + 

Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the West End of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames the most “attractive”⁠—word just coming into fashion. He had never had his Uncle Swithin’s taste in precious stones, and the abandonment by Irene when she left his house in 1887 of all the glittering things he had given her had disgusted him with this form of investment. But he still knew a diamond when he saw one, and during the week before her birthday he had taken occasion, on his way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally a little before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one’s money’s worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods. + 

Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him more and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his life, the supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong. And, alongside the dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never with his self-preservation, now or never if he were to range himself and found a family, went the secret urge of his senses roused by the sight of her who had once been a passionately desired wife, and the conviction that it was a sin against common sense and the decent secrecy of Forsytes to waste the wife he had. + 

In an opinion on Winifred’s case, Dreamer, Q.C.⁠—he would much have preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late in the day as to rouse the usual suspicion of a political job)⁠—had advised that they should go forward and obtain restitution of conjugal rights, a point which to Soames had never been in doubt. When they had obtained a decree to that effect they must wait to see if it was obeyed. If not, it would constitute legal desertion, and they should obtain evidence of misconduct and file their petition for divorce. All of which Soames knew perfectly well. They had marked him ten and one. This simplicity in his sister’s case only made him the more desperate about the difficulty in his own. Everything, in fact, was driving him towards the simple solution of Irene’s return. If it were still against the grain with her, had he not feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to forget? He at least had never injured her, and this was a world of compromise! He could offer her so much more than she had now. He would be prepared to make a liberal settlement on her which could not be upset. He often scrutinised his image in these days. He had never been a peacock like that fellow Dartie, or fancied himself a woman’s man, but he had a certain belief in his own appearance⁠—not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved, neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind. The Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his eyes, virtues. So far as he could tell there was no feature of him which need inspire dislike. + 

Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural, even if far-fetched in their inception. If he could only give tangible proof enough of his determination to let bygones be bygones, and to do all in his power to please her, why should she not come back to him? + 

He entered Gaves and Cortegal’s therefore, on the morning of November the 9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch. “Four twenty-five and dirt cheap, sir, at the money. It’s a lady’s brooch.” There was that in his mood which made him accept without demur. And he went on into the Poultry with the flat green morocco case in his breast pocket. Several times that day he opened it to look at the seven soft shining stones in their velvet oval nest. + 

“If the lady doesn’t like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time. But there’s no fear of that.” If only there were not! He got through a vast amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew. A cablegram came while he was in the office with details from the agent in Buenos Aires, and the name and address of a stewardess who would be prepared to swear to what was necessary. It was a timely spur to Soames, with his rooted distaste for the washing of dirty linen in public. And when he set forth by Underground to Victoria Station he received a fresh impetus towards the renewal of his married life from the account in his evening paper of a fashionable divorce suit. The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane. He neither could nor would breath a word to his people of his intention⁠—too reticent and proud⁠—but the thought that at least they would be glad if they knew, and wish him luck, was heartening. + 

James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of Kruger’s ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in the Times. He didn’t know where it would end. Soames sought to cheer him by the continual use of the word “Buller.” But James couldn’t tell! There was Colley⁠—and he got stuck on that hill, and this Ladysmith was down in a hollow, and altogether it looked to him a “pretty kettle of fish”; he thought they ought to be sending the sailors⁠—they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea. Soames shifted the ground of consolation. Winifred had heard from Val that there had been a “rag” and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face. + 

“Ah!” James muttered, “he’s a clever little chap.” But he shook his head shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn’t know what would become of him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on that Soames had never had a boy. He would have liked a grandson of his own name. And now⁠—well, there it was! + 

Soames flinched. He had not expected such a challenge to disclose the secret in his heart. And Emily, who saw him wince, said: + 

“Nonsense, James; don’t talk like that!” + 

But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on. There were Roger and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons. And Swithin and Timothy had never married. He had done his best; but he would soon be gone now. And, as though he had uttered words of profound consolation, he was silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece of bread, and swallowing the bread. + 

Soames excused himself directly after dinner. It was not really cold, but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him against the fits of nervous shivering to which he had been subject all day. Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than in an ordinary black overcoat. Then, feeling the morocco case flat against his heart, he sallied forth. He was no smoker, but he lit a cigarette, and smoked it gingerly as he walked along. He moved slowly down the Row towards Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to Chelsea at nine-fifteen. What did she do with herself evening after evening in that little hole? How mysterious women were! One lived alongside and knew nothing of them. What could she have seen in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad? For there was madness after all in what she had done⁠—crazy moonstruck madness, in which all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his life ruined! And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation, as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence, forgiving and forgetting, and becoming the godfather of her future. Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the moonlight struck down clear and white, he took out once more the morocco case, and let the beams draw colour from those stones. Yes, they were of the first water! But, at the hard closing snap of the case, another cold shiver ran through his nerves; and he walked on faster, clenching his gloved hands in the pockets of his coat, almost hoping she would not be in. The thought of how mysterious she was again beset him. Dining alone there night after night⁠—in an evening dress, too, as if she were making believe to be in society! Playing the piano⁠—to herself! Not even a dog or cat, so far as he had seen. And that reminded him suddenly of the mare he kept for station work at Mapledurham. If ever he went to the stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her home journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if longing to be back and lonely in her stable! “I would treat her well,” he thought incoherently. “I would be very careful.” And all that capacity for home life of which a mocking Fate seemed forever to have deprived him swelled suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed dreams opposite South Kensington Station. In the King’s Road a man came slithering out of a public house playing a concertina. Soames watched him for a moment dance crazily on the pavement to his own drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with this piece of drunken foolery. A night in the lockup! What asses people were! But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance, and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street. “I hope they’ll run him in,” thought Soames viciously. “To have ruffians like that about, with women out alone!” A woman’s figure in front had induced this thought. Her walk seemed oddly familiar, and when she turned the corner for which he was bound, his heart began to beat. He hastened on to the corner to make certain. Yes! It was Irene; he could not mistake her walk in that little drab street. She threaded two more turnings, and from the last corner he saw her enter her block of flats. To make sure of her now, he ran those few paces, hurried up the stairs, and caught her standing at her door. He heard the latchkey in the lock, and reached her side just as she turned round, startled, in the open doorway. + 

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, breathless. “I happened to see you. Let me come in a minute.” + 

She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless, her eyes widened by alarm. Then seeming to master herself, she inclined her head, and said: “Very well.” + 

Soames closed the door. He, too, had need to recover, and when she had passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute, taking deep breaths to still the beating of his heart. At this moment, so fraught with the future, to take out that morocco case seemed crude. Yet, not to take it out left him there before her with no preliminary excuse for coming. And in this dilemma he was seized with impatience at all this paraphernalia of excuse and justification. This was a scene⁠—it could be nothing else, and he must face it. He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically soft: + 

“Why have you come again? Didn’t you understand that I would rather you did not?” + 

He noticed her clothes⁠—a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa, a small round toque of the same. They suited her admirably. She had money to spare for dress, evidently! He said abruptly: + 

“It’s your birthday. I brought you this,” and he held out to her the green morocco case. + 

“Oh! No⁠—no!” + 

Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale grey velvet. + 

“Why not?” he said. “Just as a sign that you don’t bear me ill-feeling any longer.” + 

“I couldn’t.” + 

Soames took it out of the case. + 

“Let me just see how it looks.” + 

She shrank back. + 

He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the front of her dress. She shrank again. + 

Soames dropped his hand. + 

“Irene,” he said, “let bygones be bygones. If I can, surely you might. Let’s begin again, as if nothing had been. Won’t you?” His voice was wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in them a sort of supplication. + 

She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall, gave a little gulp, and that was all her answer. Soames went on: + 

“Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little hole? Come back to me, and I’ll give you all you want. You shall live your own life; I swear it.” + 

He saw her face quiver ironically. + 

“Yes,” he repeated, “but I mean it this time. I’ll only ask one thing. I just want⁠—I just want a son. Don’t look like that! I want one. It’s hard.” His voice had grown hurried, so that he hardly knew it for his own, and twice he jerked his head back as if struggling for breath. It was the sight of her eyes fixed on him, dark with a sort of fascinated fright, which pulled him together and changed that painful incoherence to anger. + 

“Is it so very unnatural?” he said between his teeth, “Is it unnatural to want a child from one’s own wife? You wrecked our life and put this blight on everything. We go on only half alive, and without any future. Is it so very unflattering to you that in spite of everything I⁠—I still want you for my wife? Speak, for Goodness’ sake! do speak.” + 

Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed. + 

“I don’t want to frighten you,” said Soames more gently. “Heaven knows. I only want you to see that I can’t go on like this. I want you back. I want you.” + 

Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but her eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to keep him at bay. And all those years, barren and bitter, since⁠—ah! when?⁠—almost since he had first known her, surged up in one great wave of recollection in Soames; and a spasm that for his life he could not control constricted his face. + 

“It’s not too late,” he said; “it’s not⁠—if you’ll only believe it.” + 

Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing gesture in front of her breast. Soames seized them. + 

“Don’t!” she said under her breath. But he stood holding on to them, trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver. Then she said quietly: + 

“I am alone here. You won’t behave again as you once behaved.” + 

Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned away. Was it possible that there could be such relentless unforgiveness! Could that one act of violent possession be still alive within her? Did it bar him thus utterly? And doggedly he said, without looking up: + 

“I am not going till you’ve answered me. I am offering what few men would bring themselves to offer, I want a⁠—a reasonable answer.” + 

And almost with surprise he heard her say: + 

“You can’t have a reasonable answer. Reason has nothing to do with it. You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die.” + 

Soames stared at her. + 

“Oh!” he said. And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of speech and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man has received a deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is going to take it, or rather what it is going to do with him. + 

“Oh!” he said again, “as bad as that? Indeed! You would rather die. That’s pretty!” + 

“I am sorry. You wanted me to answer. I can’t help the truth, can I?” + 

At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to actuality. He snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in his pocket. + 

“The truth!” he said; “there’s no such thing with women. It’s nerves⁠—nerves.” + 

He heard the whisper: + 

“Yes; nerves don’t lie. Haven’t you discovered that?” He was silent, obsessed by the thought: “I will hate this woman. I will hate her.” That was the trouble! If only he could! He shot a glance at her who stood unmoving against the wall with her head up and her hands clasped, for all the world as if she were going to be shot. And he said quickly: + 

“I don’t believe a word of it. You have a lover. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be such a⁠—such a little idiot.” He was conscious, before the expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of a non-sequitur, and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal freedom of his connubial days. He turned away to the door. But he could not go out. Something within him⁠—that most deep and secret Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his own tenacity⁠—prevented him. He turned about again, and there stood, with his back against the door, as hers was against the wall opposite, quite unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by the whole width of the room. + 

“Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?” he said. + 

Irene’s lips quivered; then she answered slowly: + 

“Do you ever think that I found out my mistake⁠—my hopeless, terrible mistake⁠—the very first week of our marriage; that I went on trying three years⁠—you know I went on trying? Was it for myself?” + 

Soames gritted his teeth. “God knows what it was. I’ve never understood you; I shall never understand you. You had everything you wanted; and you can have it again, and more. What’s the matter with me? I ask you a plain question: What is it?” Unconscious of the pathos in that enquiry, he went on passionately: “I’m not lame, I’m not loathsome, I’m not a boor, I’m not a fool. What is it? What’s the mystery about me?” + 

Her answer was a long sigh. + 

He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full of expression. “When I came here tonight I was⁠—I hoped⁠—I meant everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair again. And you meet me with ‘nerves,’ and silence, and sighs. There’s nothing tangible. It’s like⁠—it’s like a spider’s web.” + 

“Yes.” + 

That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh. + 

“Well, I don’t choose to be in a spider’s web. I’ll cut it.” He walked straight up to her. “Now!” What he had gone up to her to do he really did not know. But when he was close, the old familiar scent of her clothes suddenly affected him. He put his hands on her shoulders and bent forward to kiss her. He kissed not her lips, but a little hard line where the lips had been drawn in; then his face was pressed away by her hands; he heard her say: “Oh! No!” Shame, compunction, sense of futility flooded his whole being, he turned on his heel and went straight out. + 

III + 

Visit to Irene + 

Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington. She had received his telegram while at breakfast. Her abode⁠—a studio and two bedrooms in a St. John’s Wood garden⁠—had been selected by her for the complete independence which it guaranteed. Unwatched by Mrs. Grundy, unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive lame ducks at any hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck without studio of its own made use of June’s. She enjoyed her freedom, and possessed herself with a sort of virginal passion; the warmth which she would have lavished on Bosinney, and of which⁠—given her Forsyte tenacity⁠—he must surely have tired, she now expended in championship of the underdogs and budding “geniuses” of the artistic world. She lived, in fact, to turn ducks into the swans she believed they were. The very fervour of her protection warped her judgments. But she was loyal and liberal; her small eager hand was ever against the oppressions of academic and commercial opinion, and though her income was considerable, her bank balance was often a minus quantity. + 

She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit to Eric Cobbley. A miserable Gallery had refused to let that straight-haired genius have his one-man show after all. Its impudent manager, after visiting his studio, had expressed the opinion that it would only be a “one-horse show from the selling point of view.” This crowning example of commercial cowardice towards her favourite lame duck⁠—and he so hard up, with a wife and two children, that he had caused her account to be overdrawn⁠—was still making the blood glow in her small, resolute face, and her red-gold hair to shine more than ever. She gave her father a hug, and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as he with her. It became at once a question which would fry them first. + 

Jolyon had reached the words: “My dear, I want you to come with me,” when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes moving from side to side⁠—like the tail of a preoccupied cat⁠—that she was not attending. “Dad, is it true that I absolutely can’t get at any of my money?” + 

“Only the income, fortunately, my love.” + 

“How perfectly beastly! Can’t it be done somehow? There must be a way. I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds.” + 

“A small Gallery,” murmured Jolyon, “seems a modest desire. But your grandfather foresaw it.” + 

“I think,” cried June vigorously, “that all this care about money is awful, when there’s so much genius in the world simply crushed out for want of a little. I shall never marry and have children; why shouldn’t I be able to do some good instead of having it all tied up in case of things which will never come off?” + 

“Our name is Forsyte, my dear,” replied Jolyon in the ironical voice to which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown accustomed; “and Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle their property that their grandchildren, in case they should die before their parents, have to make wills leaving the property that will only come to themselves when their parents die. Do you follow that? Nor do I, but it’s a fact, anyway; we live by the principle that so long as there is a possibility of keeping wealth in the family it must not go out; if you die unmarried, your money goes to Jolly and Holly and their children if they marry. Isn’t it pleasant to know that whatever you do you can none of you be destitute?” + 

“But can’t I borrow the money?” + 

Jolyon shook his head. “You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if you could manage it out of your income.” + 

June uttered a contemptuous sound. + 

“Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with.” + 

“My dear child,” murmured Jolyon, “wouldn’t it come to the same thing?” + 

“No,” said June shrewdly, “I could buy for ten thousand; that would only be four hundred a year. But I should have to pay a thousand a year rent, and that would only leave me five hundred. If I had the Gallery, Dad, think what I could do. I could make Eric Cobbley’s name in no time, and ever so many others.” + 

“Names worth making make themselves in time.” + 

“When they’re dead.” + 

“Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having his name made?” + 

“Yes, you,” said June, pressing his arm. + 

Jolyon started. “I?” he thought. “Oh! Ah! Now she’s going to ask me to do something. We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our different ways.” + 

June came closer to him in the cab. + 

“Darling,” she said, “you buy the Gallery, and I’ll pay you four hundred a year for it. Then neither of us will be any the worse off. Besides, it’s a splendid investment.” + 

Jolyon wriggled. “Don’t you think,” he said, “that for an artist to buy a Gallery is a bit dubious? Besides, ten thousand pounds is a lump, and I’m not a commercial character.” + 

June looked at him with admiring appraisement. + 

“Of course you’re not, but you’re awfully businesslike. And I’m sure we could make it pay. It’ll be a perfect way of scoring off those wretched dealers and people.” And again she squeezed her father’s arm. + 

Jolyon’s face expressed quizzical despair. + 

“Where is this desirable Gallery? Splendidly situated, I suppose?” + 

“Just off Cork Street.” + 

“Ah!” thought Jolyon, “I knew it was just off somewhere. Now for what I want out of her!” + 

“Well, I’ll think of it, but not just now. You remember Irene? I want you to come with me and see her. Soames is after her again. She might be safer if we could give her asylum somewhere.” + 

The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most calculated to rouse June’s interest. + 

“Irene! I haven’t seen her since⁠—! Of course! I’d love to help her.” + 

It was Jolyon’s turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for this spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting. + 

“Irene is proud,” he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden doubt of June’s discretion; “she’s difficult to help. We must tread gently. This is the place. I wired her to expect us. Let’s send up our cards.” + 

“I can’t bear Soames,” said June as she got out; “he sneers at everything that isn’t successful.” + 

Irene was in what was called the “Ladies’ drawing-room” of the Piedmont Hotel. + 

Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her former friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a sofa never sat on since the hotel’s foundation. Jolyon could see that Irene was deeply affected by this simple forgiveness. + 

“So Soames has been worrying you?” he said. + 

“I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to him.” + 

“You’re not going, of course?” cried June. + 

Irene smiled faintly and shook her head. “But his position is horrible,” she murmured. + 

“It’s his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he could.” + 

Jolyon remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped that no divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover’s name. + 

“Let us hear what Irene is going to do,” he said. + 

Irene’s lips quivered, but she spoke calmly. + 

“I’d better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me.” + 

“How horrible!” cried June. + 

“What else can I do?” + 

“Out of the question,” said Jolyon very quietly, “sans amour.” + 

He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she half turned her back on them, and stood regaining control of herself. + 

June said suddenly: + 

“Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone. What does he want at his age?” + 

“A child. It’s not unnatural.” + 

“A child!” cried June scornfully. “Of course! To leave his money to. If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have one; then you can divorce him, and he can marry her.” + 

Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring June⁠—her violent partisanship was fighting Soames’ battle. + 

“It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill, and see how things shape.” + 

“Of course,” said June; “only.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Irene looked full at Jolyon⁠—in all his many attempts afterwards to analyze that glance he never could succeed. + 

“No! I should only bring trouble on you all. I will go abroad.” + 

He knew from her voice that this was final. The irrelevant thought flashed through him: “Well, I could see her there.” But he said: + 

“Don’t you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he followed?” + 

“I don’t know. I can but try.” + 

June sprang up and paced the room. “It’s all horrible,” she said. “Why should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless year after year by this disgusting sanctimonious law?” But someone had come into the room, and June came to a standstill. Jolyon went up to Irene: + 

“Do you want money?” + 

“No.” + 

“And would you like me to let your flat?” + 

“Yes, Jolyon, please.” + 

“When shall you be going?” + 

“Tomorrow.” + 

“You won’t go back there in the meantime, will you?” This he said with an anxiety strange to himself. + 

“No; I’ve got all I want here.” + 

“You’ll send me your address?” + 

She put out her hand to him. “I feel you’re a rock.” + 

“Built on sand,” answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; “but it’s a pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that. And if you change your mind⁠—! Come along, June; say goodbye.” + 

June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene. + 

“Don’t think of him,” she said under her breath; “enjoy yourself, and bless you!” + 

With a memory of tears in Irene’s eyes, and of a smile on her lips, they went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had interrupted the interview and was turning over the papers on the table. + 

Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed: + 

“Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!” + 

But Jolyon did not respond. He had something of his father’s balance, and could see things impartially even when his emotions were roused. Irene was right; Soames’ position was as bad or worse than her own. As for the law⁠—it catered for a human nature of which it took a naturally low view. And, feeling that if he stayed in his daughter’s company he would in one way or another commit an indiscretion, he told her he must catch his train back to Oxford; and hailing a cab, left her to Turner’s watercolours, with the promise that he would think over that Gallery. + 

But he thought over Irene instead. Pity, they said, was akin to love! If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he pitied her profoundly. To think of her drifting about Europe so handicapped and lonely! “I hope to goodness she’ll keep her head!” he thought; “she might easily grow desperate.” In fact, now that she had cut loose from her poor threads of occupation, he couldn’t imagine how she would go on⁠—so beautiful a creature, hopeless, and fair game for anyone! In his exasperation was more than a little fear and jealousy. Women did strange things when they were driven into corners. “I wonder what Soames will do now!” he thought. “A rotten, idiotic state of things! And I suppose they would say it was her own fault.” Very preoccupied and sore at heart, he got into his train, mislaid his ticket, and on the platform at Oxford took his hat off to a lady whose face he seemed to remember without being able to put a name to her, not even when he saw her having tea at the Rainbow. + 

IV + 

Where Forsytes Fear to Tread + 

Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case still flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as death. A spider’s web! Walking fast, and noting nothing in the moonlight, he brooded over the scene he had been through, over the memory of her figure rigid in his grasp. And the more he brooded, the more certain he became that she had a lover⁠—her words, “I would sooner die!” were ridiculous if she had not. Even if she had never loved him, she had made no fuss until Bosinney came on the scene. No; she was in love again, or she would not have made that melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all the circumstances was reasonable! Very well! That simplified matters. + 

“I’ll take steps to know where I am,” he thought; “I’ll go to Polteed’s the first thing tomorrow morning.” + 

But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble with himself. He had employed Polteed’s agency several times in the routine of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie’s case, but he had never thought it possible to employ them to watch his own wife. + 

It was too insulting to himself! + 

He slept over that project and his wounded pride⁠—or rather, kept vigil. Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she called herself by her maiden name of Heron. Polteed would not know, at first at all events, whose wife she was, would not look at him obsequiously and leer behind his back. She would just be the wife of one of his clients. And that would be true⁠—for was he not his own solicitor? + 

He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at the first possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail himself. And making Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee, he stole out of the house before the hour of breakfast. He walked rapidly to one of those small West End streets where Polteed’s and other firms ministered to the virtues of the wealthier classes. Hitherto he had always had Polteed to see him in the Poultry; but he well knew their address, and reached it at the opening hour. In the outer office, a room furnished so cosily that it might have been a moneylender’s, he was attended by a lady who might have been a schoolmistress. + 

“I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed. He knows me⁠—never mind my name.” + 

To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was reduced to having his wife spied on, was the overpowering consideration. + 

Mr. Claud Polteed⁠—so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed⁠—was one of those men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown eyes, who might be taken for Jews but are really Phoenicians; he received Soames in a room hushed by thickness of carpet and curtains. It was, in fact, confidentially furnished, without trace of document anywhere to be seen. + 

Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door with a certain ostentation. + 

“If a client sends for me,” he was in the habit of saying, “he takes what precaution he likes. If he comes here, we convince him that we have no leakages. I may safely say we lead in security, if in nothing else.⁠ ⁠… Now, sir, what can I do for you?” + 

Soames’ gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak. It was absolutely necessary to hide from this man that he had any but professional interest in the matter; and, mechanically, his face assumed its sideway smile. + 

“I’ve come to you early like this because there’s not an hour to lose”⁠—if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet! “Have you a really trustworthy woman free?” + 

Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his eyes over it, and locked the drawer up again. + 

“Yes,” he said; “the very woman.” + 

Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs⁠—nothing but a faint flush, which might have been his normal complexion, betrayed him. + 

“Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat C, Truro Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice.” + 

“Precisely,” said Mr. Polteed; “divorce, I presume?” and he blew into a speaking-tube. “Mrs. Blanch in? I shall want to speak to her in ten minutes.” + 

“Deal with any reports yourself,” resumed Soames, “and send them to me personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered. My client exacts the utmost secrecy.” + 

Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, “You are teaching your grandmother, my dear sir;” and his eyes slid over Soames’ face for one unprofessional instant. + 

“Make his mind perfectly easy,” he said. “Do you smoke?” + 

“No,” said Soames. “Understand me: Nothing may come of this. If a name gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very serious consequences.” + 

Mr. Polteed nodded. “I can put it into the cipher category. Under that system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers.” + 

He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote on them, and handed one to Soames. + 

“Keep that, sir; it’s your key. I retain this duplicate. The case we’ll call 7x. The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the Mansions 25; yourself⁠—I should say, your firm⁠—31; my firm 32, myself 2. In case you should have to mention your client in writing I have called him 43; any person we suspect will be 47; a second person 51. Any special hint or instruction while we’re about it?” + 

“No,” said Soames; “that is⁠—every consideration compatible.” + 

Again Mr. Polteed nodded. “Expense?” + 

Soames shrugged. “In reason,” he answered curtly, and got up. “Keep it entirely in your own hands.” + 

“Entirely,” said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and the door. “I shall be seeing you in that other case before long. Good morning, sir.” His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames once more, and he unlocked the door. + 

“Good morning,” said Soames, looking neither to right nor left. + 

Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself. A spider’s web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life as his most sacred piece of property. But the die was cast, he could not go back. And he went on into the Poultry, and locked away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher destined to make crystal-clear his domestic bankruptcy. + 

Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all the private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of others, should dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own; and yet not odd, for who should know so well as he the whole unfeeling process of legal regulation. + 

He worked hard all day. Winifred was due at four o’clock; he was to take her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C., and waiting for her he reread the letter he had caused her to write the day of Dartie’s departure, requiring him to return. + 

“Dear Montague, + 

“I have received your letter with the news that you have left me forever and are on your way to Buenos Aires. It has naturally been a great shock. I am taking this earliest opportunity of writing to tell you that I am prepared to let bygones be bygones if you will return to me at once. I beg you to do so. I am very much upset, and will not say any more now. I am sending this letter registered to the address you left at your Club. Please cable to me. + 

Ugh! What bitter humbug! He remembered leaning over Winifred while she copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said, laying down her pen, “Suppose he comes, Soames!” in such a strange tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind. “He won’t come,” he had answered, “till he’s spent his money. That’s why we must act at once.” Annexed to the copy of that letter was the original of Dartie’s drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club. Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He seemed to hear the Judge’s voice say: “You took this seriously! Seriously enough to write him as you did? Do you think he meant it?” Never mind! The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not returned. Annexed also was his cabled answer: “Impossible return. Dartie.” Soames shook his head. If the whole thing were not disposed of within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides all the worry to Winifred and his father. “I must stiffen Dreamer’s back,” he thought; “we must push it on.” + 

Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her fair hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James’ barouche drawn by James’ pair. Soames had not seen it in the City since his father retired from business five years ago, and its incongruity gave him a shock. “Times are changing,” he thought; “one doesn’t know what’ll go next!” Top hats even were scarcer. He enquired after Val. Val, said Winifred, wrote that he was going to play polo next term. She thought he was in a very good set. She added with fashionably disguised anxiety: “Will there be much publicity about my affair, Soames? Must it be in the papers? It’s so bad for him, and the girls.” + 

With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered: + 

“The papers are a pushing lot; it’s very difficult to keep things out. They pretend to be guarding the public’s morals, and they corrupt them with their beastly reports. But we haven’t got to that yet. We’re only seeing Dreamer today on the restitution question. Of course he understands that it’s to lead to a divorce; but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie back⁠—you might practice that attitude today.” + 

Winifred sighed. + 

“Oh! What a clown Monty’s been!” she said. + 

Soames gave her a sharp look. It was clear to him that she could not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing if given half a chance. His own instinct had been firm in this matter from the first. To save a little scandal now would only bring on his sister and her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin later on if Dartie were allowed to hang on to them, going downhill and spending the money James would leave his daughter. Though it was all tied up, that fellow would milk the settlements somehow, and make his family pay through the nose to keep him out of bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol! They left the shining carriage, with the shining horses and the shining-hatted servants on the Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.’s Chambers in Crown Office Row. + 

“Mr. Bellby is here, sir,” said the clerk; “Mr. Dreamer will be ten minutes.” + 

Mr. Bellby, the junior⁠—not as junior as he might have been, for Soames only employed barristers of established reputation; it was, indeed, something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed to establish that which made him employ them⁠—Mr. Bellby was seated, taking a final glance through his papers. He had come from Court, and was in wig and gown, which suited a nose jutting out like the handle of a tiny pump, his small shrewd blue eyes, and rather protruding lower lip⁠—no better man to supplement and stiffen Dreamer. + 

The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the weather and spoke of the war. Soames interrupted suddenly: + 

“If he doesn’t comply we can’t bring proceedings for six months. I want to get on with the matter, Bellby.” + 

Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at Winifred and murmured: “The Law’s delays, Mrs. Dartie.” + 

“Six months!” repeated Soames; “it’ll drive it up to June! We shan’t get the suit on till after the long vacation. We must put the screw on, Bellby”⁠—he would have all his work cut out to keep Winifred up to the scratch. + 

“Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir.” + 

They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting Winifred after an interval of one minute by his watch. + 

Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before the fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he had the leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great learning, a considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and little greyish whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking of one eye, and the concealment of his lower with his upper lip, which gave a smothered turn to his speech. He had a way, too, of coming suddenly round the corner on the person he was talking to; this, with a disconcerting tone of voice, and a habit of growling before he began to speak⁠—had secured a reputation second in Probate and Divorce to very few. Having listened, eye cocked, to Mr. Bellby’s breezy recapitulation of the facts, he growled, and said: + 

“I know all that;” and coming round the corner at Winifred, smothered the words: + 

“We want to get him back, don’t we, Mrs. Dartie?” + 

Soames interposed sharply: + 

“My sister’s position, of course, is intolerable.” + 

Dreamer growled. “Exactly. Now, can we rely on the cabled refusal, or must we wait till after Christmas to give him a chance to have written⁠—that’s the point, isn’t it?” + 

“The sooner.⁠ ⁠…” Soames began. + 

“What do you say, Bellby?” said Dreamer, coming round his corner. + 

Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound. + 

“We won’t be on till the middle of December. We’ve no need to give um more rope than that.” + 

“No,” said Soames, “why should my sister be incommoded by his choosing to go⁠ ⁠…” + 

“To Jericho!” said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; “quite so. People oughtn’t to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?” And he raised his gown into a sort of fantail. “I agree. We can go forward. Is there anything more?” + 

“Nothing at present,” said Soames meaningly; “I wanted you to see my sister.” + 

Dreamer growled softly: “Delighted. Good evening!” And let fall the protection of his gown. + 

They filed out. Winifred went down the stairs. Soames lingered. In spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer. + 

“The evidence is all right, I think,” he said to Bellby. “Between ourselves, if we don’t get the thing through quick, we never may. D’you think he understands that?” + 

“I’ll make um,” said Bellby. “Good man though⁠—good man.” + 

Soames nodded and hastened after his sister. He found her in a draught, biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said: + 

“The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete.” + 

Winifred’s face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to the carriage. And, all through that silent drive back to Green Street, the souls of both of them revolved a single thought: “Why, oh! why should I have to expose my misfortune to the public like this? Why have to employ spies to peer into my private troubles? They were not of my making.” + 

V + 

Jolly Sits in Judgment + 

The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the British body politic. Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning a war which must affect property, had been heard to say that these Boers were a pigheaded lot; they were causing a lot of expense, and the sooner they had their lesson the better. He would send out Wolseley! Seeing always a little further than other people⁠—whence the most considerable fortune of all the Forsytes⁠—he had perceived already that Buller was not the man⁠—“a bull of a chap, who just went butting, and if they didn’t look out Ladysmith would fall.” This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he was enabled to say to everybody: “I told you so.” During that week of gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas attended so many drills in his corps, the Devil’s Own, that young Nicholas consulted the family physician about his son’s health and was alarmed to find that he was perfectly sound. The boy had only just eaten his dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense, and it was in a way a nightmare to his father and mother that he should be playing with military efficiency at a time when military efficiency in the civilian population might conceivably be wanted. His grandfather, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly educated in the feeling that no British war could be other than little and professional, and profoundly distrustful of Imperial commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to lose, for he owned De Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient sacrifice on the part of his grandson. + 

At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed. The inherent effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two months of the term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising out into vivid oppositions. Normal adolescence, ever in England of a conservative tendency, though not taking things too seriously, was vehement for a fight to a finish and a good licking for the Boers. Of this larger faction Val Dartie was naturally a member. Radical youth, on the other hand, a small but perhaps more vocal body, was for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy. Until Black Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and argument remained but academic. Jolly was one of those who knew not where he stood. A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon’s love of justice prevented him from seeing one side only. Moreover, in his set of “the best” there was a “jumping-Jesus” of extremely advanced opinions and some personal magnetism. Jolly wavered. His father, too, seemed doubtful in his views. And though, as was proper at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father, watchful for defects which might still be remedied, still that father had an air which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of ironic tolerance. Artists, of course, were notoriously Hamlet-like, and to this extent one must discount for one’s father, even if one loved him. But Jolyon’s original view, that to “put your nose in where you aren’t wanted” (as the Uitlanders had done) “and then work the oracle till you get on top is not being quite the clean potato,” had, whether founded in fact or no, a certain attraction for his son, who thought a deal about gentility. On the other hand Jolly could not abide such as his set called “cranks,” and Val’s set called “smugs,” so that he was still balancing when the clock of Black Week struck. One⁠—two⁠—three, came those ominous repulses at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso. The sturdy English soul reacting after the first cried, “Ah! but Methuen!” after the second: “Ah! but Buller!” then, in inspissated gloom, hardened. And Jolly said to himself: “No, damn it! We’ve got to lick the beggars now; I don’t care whether we’re right or wrong.” And, if he had known it, his father was thinking the same thought. + 

That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with “one of the best.” After the second toast, “Buller and damnation to the Boers,” drunk⁠—no heel taps⁠—in the college Burgundy, he noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a grin and saying something to his neighbour. He was sure it was disparaging. The last boy in the world to make himself conspicuous or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather red and shut his lips. The queer hostility he had always felt towards his second-cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced. “All right!” he thought, “you wait, my friend!” More wine than was good for him, as the custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped forth to a secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm. + 

“What did you say about me in there?” + 

“Mayn’t I say what I like?” + 

“No.” + 

“Well, I said you were a pro-Boer⁠—and so you are!” + 

“You’re a liar!” + 

“D’you want a row?” + 

“Of course, but not here; in the garden.” + 

“All right. Come on.” + 

They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching; they climbed the garden railings. The spikes on the top slightly ripped Val’s sleeve, and occupied his mind. Jolly’s mind was occupied by the thought that they were going to fight in the precincts of a college foreign to them both. It was not the thing, but never mind⁠—the young beast! + 

They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took off their coats. + 

“You’re not screwed, are you?” said Jolly suddenly. “I can’t fight you if you’re screwed.” + 

“No more than you.” + 

“All right then.” + 

Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of defence. They had drunk too much for science, and so were especially careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote Val almost accidentally on the nose. After that it was all a dark and ugly scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one to call “time,” till, battered and blown, they unclinched and staggered back from each other, as a voice said: + 

“Your names, young gentlemen?” + 

At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate, like some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up their coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made for the secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight. Here, in dim light, they mopped their faces, and without a word walked, ten paces apart, to the college gate. They went out silently, Val going towards the Broad along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane towards the High. His head, still fumed, was busy with regret that he had not displayed more science, passing in review the counters and knockout blows which he had not delivered. His mind strayed on to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike that which he had just been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and sword, with thrust and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved Dumas. He fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and D’Artagnan rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as Coconnas, Brissac, or Rochefort. The fellow was just a confounded cousin who didn’t come up to Cocker. Never mind! He had given him one or two. “Pro-Boer!” The word still rankled, and thoughts of enlisting jostled his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing gallantly, while the Boers rolled over like rabbits. And, turning up his smarting eyes, he saw the stars shining between the housetops of the High, and himself lying out on the Karoo (whatever that was) rolled in a blanket, with his rifle ready and his gaze fixed on a glittering heaven. + 

He had a fearful head next morning, which he doctored, as became one of “the best,” by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong coffee which he could not drink, and only sipping a little Hock at lunch. The legend that “some fool” had run into him round a corner accounted for a bruise on his cheek. He would on no account have mentioned the fight, for, on second thoughts, it fell far short of his standards. + 

The next day he went “down,” and travelled through to Robin Hill. Nobody was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to Paris. He spent a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of touch with either of his sisters. June, indeed, was occupied with lame ducks, whom, as a rule, Jolly could not stand, especially that Eric Cobbley and his family, “hopeless outsiders,” who were always littering up the house in the Vacation. And between Holly and himself there was a strange division, as if she were beginning to have opinions of her own, which was so⁠—unnecessary. He punched viciously at a ball, rode furiously but alone in Richmond Park, making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles put up to close certain worn avenues of grass⁠—keeping his nerve in, he called it. Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are. He bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting across the pond into the kitchen-garden wall, to the peril of gardeners, with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist and save South Africa for his country. In fact, now that they were appealing for Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset. Ought he to go? None of “the best,” so far as he knew⁠—and he was in correspondence with several⁠—were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once⁠—very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything⁠—but to do it off his own bat might look like swagger; because of course it wasn’t really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became quite unlike his serene and rather lordly self. + 

And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath⁠—two riders, in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she on the left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and he on the right-hand as assuredly that squirt Val Dartie. His first impulse was to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning of this portent, tell the fellow to “bunk,” and take Holly home. His second⁠—to feel that he would look a fool if they refused. He reined his horse in behind a tree, then perceived that it was equally impossible to spy on them. Nothing for it but to go home and await her coming! Sneaking out with that young bounder! He could not consult with June, because she had gone up that morning in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot. And his father was still in “that rotten Paris.” He felt that this was emphatically one of those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at school, where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to newspapers and placed them in the centre of their studies to accustom them to coolness in moments of danger. He did not feel at all cool waiting in the stable-yard, idly stroking the dog Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat monk, and sad in the absence of his master, turned up his face, panting with gratitude for this attention. It was half an hour before Holly came, flushed and ever so much prettier than she had any right to look. He saw her look at him quickly⁠—guiltily of course⁠—then followed her in, and, taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their grandfather’s study. The room, not much used now, was still vaguely haunted for them both by a presence with which they associated tenderness, large drooping white moustaches, the scent of cigar smoke, and laughter. Here Jolly, in the prime of his youth, before he went to school at all, had been wont to wrestle with his grandfather, who even at eighty had an irresistible habit of crooking his leg. Here Holly, perched on the arm of the great leather chair, had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which she would whisper secrets. Through that window they had all three sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn, and a mysterious game called “Wopsy-doozle,” not to be understood by outsiders, which made old Jolyon very hot. Here once on a warm night Holly had appeared in her nighty, having had a bad dream, to have the clutch of it released. And here Jolly, having begun the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle Beauce’s new-laid egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent down (in the absence of his father) to the ensuing dialogue: + 

“Now, my boy, you mustn’t go on like this.” + 

“Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she boxed mine again.” + 

“Strike a lady? That’ll never do! Have you begged her pardon?” + 

“Not yet.” + 

“Then you must go and do it at once. Come along.” + 

“But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one.” + 

“My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do.” + 

“Well, she lost her temper; and I didn’t lose mine.” + 

“Come along.” + 

“You come too, then, Gran.” + 

“Well⁠—this time only.” + 

And they had gone hand in hand. + 

Here⁠—where the Waverley novels and Byron’s works and Gibbon’s Roman Empire and Humboldt’s Cosmos, and the bronzes on the mantelpiece, and that masterpiece of the oily school, Dutch Fishing-Boats at Sunset, were fixed as fate, and for all sign of change old Jolyon might have been sitting there still, with legs crossed, in the arm chair, and domed forehead and deep eyes grave above the Times⁠—here they came, those two grandchildren. And Jolly said: + 

“I saw you and that fellow in the Park.” + 

The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some satisfaction; she ought to be ashamed! + 

“Well?” she said. + 

Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less. + 

“Do you know,” he said weightily, “that he called me a pro-Boer last term? And I had to fight him.” + 

“Who won?” + 

Jolly wished to answer: “I should have,” but it seemed beneath him. + 

“Look here!” he said, “what’s the meaning of it? Without telling anybody!” + 

“Why should I? Dad isn’t here; why shouldn’t I ride with him?” + 

“You’ve got me to ride with. I think he’s an awful young rotter.” + 

Holly went pale with anger. + 

“He isn’t. It’s your own fault for not liking him.” + 

And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at the bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded from him so far by his sister’s dark head under her soft felt riding hat. He felt queerly disturbed, shaken to his young foundations. A lifelong domination lay shattered round his feet. He went up to the Venus and mechanically inspected the tortoise. + 

Why didn’t he like Val Dartie? He could not tell. Ignorant of family history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started thirteen years before with Bosinney’s defection from June in favour of Soames’ wife, knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at sea. He just did dislike him. The question, however, was: What should he do? Val Dartie, it was true, was a second-cousin, but it was not the thing for Holly to go about with him. And yet to “tell” of what he had chanced on was against his creed. In this dilemma he went and sat in the old leather chair and crossed his legs. It grew dark while he sat there staring out through the long window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves, becoming slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk. + 

“Grandfather!” he thought without sequence, and took out his watch. He could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going. “Five o’clock!” His grandfather’s first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth with age⁠—all the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of many a fall. The chime was like a little voice from out of that golden age, when they first came from St. John’s Wood, London, to this house⁠—came driving with grandfather in his carriage, and almost instantly took to the trees. Trees to climb, and grandfather watering the geranium-beds below! What was to be done? Tell Dad he must come home? Confide in June?⁠—only she was so⁠—so sudden! Do nothing and trust to luck? After all, the Vac. would soon be over. Go up and see Val and warn him off? But how get his address? Holly wouldn’t give it him! A maze of paths, a cloud of possibilities! He lit a cigarette. When he had smoked it halfway through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been passed gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper: “Do nothing; be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!” And Jolly heaved a sigh of contentment, blowing smoke through his nostrils.⁠ ⁠… + 

But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still frowning. “He is not⁠—he is not!” were the words which kept forming on her lips. + 

VI + 

Jolyon in Two Minds + 

A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare St. Lazare was Jolyon’s haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow Forsytes abroad⁠—vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden runs, the Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge. Their air of having come because they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as possible annoyed him. But no other Forsyte came near this haunt, where he had a wood fire in his bedroom and the coffee was excellent. Paris was always to him more attractive in winter. The acrid savour from woodsmoke and chestnut-roasting braziers, the sharpness of the wintry sunshine on bright rays, the open cafés defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained brisk boulevard crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a soul which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away. + 

He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed. He felt philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a darkness shot with shifting gleams of light. + 

When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he was far from admitting that Irene’s presence was influencing him. He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to see her had been more than half the reason. In England one did not admit what was natural. He had thought it might be well to speak to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but in Paris he at once knew better. There was a glamour over the city. On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer which procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves: + 

“My Dear Jolyon, + 

“It will be a happiness for me to see you. + 

He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as he had often had going to visit an adored picture. No woman, so far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sensuous and yet impersonal sensation. He was going to sit and feast his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to go and feast his eyes again tomorrow. Such was his feeling, when in the tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near the river she came to him preceded by a small pageboy who uttered the word, “Madame,” and vanished. Her face, her smile, the poise of her figure, were just as he had pictured, and the expression of her face said plainly: “A friend!” + 

“Well,” he said, “what news, poor exile?” + 

“None.” + 

“Nothing from Soames?” + 

“Nothing.” + 

“I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you some money. How do you like Paris?” + 

While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least conceivable dimple. It was like discovering a woman in what had hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost impersonally admired. She owned that to be alone in Paris was a little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert. Besides, the English were not liked just now! + 

“That will hardly be your case,” said Jolyon; “you should appeal to the French.” + 

“It has its disadvantages.” + 

Jolyon nodded. + 

“Well, you must let me take you about while I’m here. We’ll start tomorrow. Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we’ll go to the Opéra-Comique.” + 

It was the beginning of daily meetings. + 

Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which to be friendly with a pretty woman. Revelation was alighting like a bird in his heart, singing: “Elle est ton rêve! Elle est ton rêve!” Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous⁠—a bad case of elderly rapture. Having once been ostracised by Society, he had never since had any real regard for conventional morality; but the idea of a love which she could never return⁠—and how could she at his age?⁠—hardly mounted beyond his subconscious mind. He was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and loneliness of her life. Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the pleasure she clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably desirous of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure. It was like watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink in his companionship. So far as they could tell, no one knew her address except himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known, so that discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits to concerts, picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners, expeditions to Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau. And time fled⁠—one of those full months without past to it or future. What in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry⁠—arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there, smiling and happy in their friendship, and always to him more beautiful and spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life seemed to march in admirable step with his own, conditioned by emotion more than by reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to beauty, almost passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to instinctive rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable. And during all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire. The future⁠—inexorable pendant to the present he took care not to face, for fear of breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this time in places still more delightful, where the sun was hot and there were strange things to see and paint. The end came swiftly on the 20th of January with a telegram: + 

“Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry.⁠—Jolly.” + 

Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the Louvre. It brought him up with a round turn. While he was lotus-eating here, his boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought to be, had taken this great step towards danger, hardship, perhaps even death. He felt disturbed to the soul, realising suddenly how Irene had twined herself round the roots of his being. Thus threatened with severance, the tie between them⁠—for it had become a kind of tie⁠—no longer had impersonal quality. The tranquil enjoyment of things in common, Jolyon perceived, was gone forever. He saw his feeling as it was, in the nature of an infatuation. Ridiculous, perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose itself. And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any such disclosure. The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way. He was proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight for the country; for on Jolyon’s pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had left its mark. And so the end was reached before the beginning! Well, luckily he had never made a sign! + 

When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the Virgin of the Rocks, graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious. “Have I to give up seeing that?” he thought. “It’s unnatural, so long as she’s willing that I should see her.” He stood, unnoticed, watching her, storing up the image of her figure, envying the picture on which she was bending that long scrutiny. Twice she turned her head towards the entrance, and he thought: “That’s for me!” At last he went forward. + 

“Look!” he said. + 

She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh. + 

That sigh, too, was for him! His position was really cruel! To be loyal to his son he must just shake her hand and go. To be loyal to the feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that feeling was. Could she, would she understand the silence in which he was gazing at that picture? + 

“I’m afraid I must go home at once,” he said at last. “I shall miss all this awfully.” + 

“So shall I; but, of course, you must go.” + 

“Well!” said Jolyon holding out his hand. + 

Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him. + 

“Such is life!” he said. “Take care of yourself, my dear!” + 

He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his brain refused to steer him away from her. From the doorway, he saw her lift her hand and touch its fingers with her lips. He raised his hat solemnly, and did not look back again. + 

VII + 

Dartie Versus Dartie + 

The suit⁠—Dartie versus Dartie⁠—for restitution of those conjugal rights concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided, followed the laws of subtraction towards day of judgment. This was not reached before the Courts rose for Christmas, but the case was third on the list when they sat again. Winifred spent the Christmas holidays a thought more fashionably than usual, with the matter locked up in her low-cut bosom. James was particularly liberal to her that Christmas, expressing thereby his sympathy, and relief, at the approaching dissolution of her marriage with that “precious rascal,” which his old heart felt but his old lips could not utter. + 

The disappearance of Dartie made the fall in Consols a comparatively small matter; and as to the scandal⁠—the real animus he felt against that fellow, and the increasing lead which property was attaining over reputation in a true Forsyte about to leave this world, served to drug a mind from which all allusions to the matter (except his own) were studiously kept. What worried him as a lawyer and a parent was the fear that Dartie might suddenly turn up and obey the Order of the Court when made. That would be a pretty how-de-do! The fear preyed on him in fact so much that, in presenting Winifred with a large Christmas cheque, he said: “It’s chiefly for that chap out there; to keep him from coming back.” It was, of course, to pitch away good money, but all in the nature of insurance against that bankruptcy which would no longer hang over him if only the divorce went through; and he questioned Winifred rigorously until she could assure him that the money had been sent. Poor woman!⁠—it cost her many a pang to send what must find its way into the vanity-bag of “that creature!” Soames, hearing of it, shook his head. They were not dealing with a Forsyte, reasonably tenacious of his purpose. It was very risky without knowing how the land lay out there. Still, it would look well with the Court; and he would see that Dreamer brought it out. “I wonder,” he said suddenly, “where that ballet goes after the Argentine”; never omitting a chance of reminder; for he knew that Winifred still had a weakness, if not for Dartie, at least for not laundering him in public. Though not good at showing admiration, he admitted that she was behaving extremely well, with all her children at home gaping like young birds for news of their father⁠—Imogen just on the point of coming out, and Val very restive about the whole thing. He felt that Val was the real heart of the matter to Winifred, who certainly loved him beyond her other children. The boy could spoke the wheel of this divorce yet if he set his mind to it. And Soames was very careful to keep the proximity of the preliminary proceedings from his nephew’s ears. He did more. He asked him to dine at the Remove, and over Val’s cigar introduced the subject which he knew to be nearest to his heart. + 

“I hear,” he said, “that you want to play polo up at Oxford.” + 

Val became less recumbent in his chair. + 

“Rather!” he said. + 

“Well,” continued Soames, “that’s a very expensive business. Your grandfather isn’t likely to consent to it unless he can make sure that he’s not got any other drain on him.” And he paused to see whether the boy understood his meaning. + 

Val’s thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace appeared on his wide mouth, and he muttered: + 

“I suppose you mean my Dad!” + 

“Yes,” said Soames; “I’m afraid it depends on whether he continues to be a drag or not;” and said no more, letting the boy dream it over. + 

But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey and a girl riding it. Though Crum was in town and an introduction to Cynthia Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask; indeed, he shunned Crum and lived a life strange even to himself, except in so far as accounts with tailor and livery stable were concerned. To his mother, his sisters, his young brother, he seemed to spend this Vacation in “seeing fellows,” and his evenings sleepily at home. They could not propose anything in daylight that did not meet with the one response: “Sorry; I’ve got to see a fellow”; and he was put to extraordinary shifts to get in and out of the house unobserved in riding clothes; until, being made a member of the Goat’s Club, he was able to transport them there, where he could change unregarded and slip off on his hack to Richmond Park. He kept his growing sentiment religiously to himself. Not for a world would he breathe to the “fellows,” whom he was not “seeing,” anything so ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and his. But he could not help its destroying his other appetites. It was coming between him and the legitimate pleasures of youth at last on its own in a way which must, he knew, make him a milksop in the eyes of Crum. All he cared for was to dress in his last-created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin Hill Gate, where presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling with its slim and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves they would go off side by side, not talking very much, riding races sometimes, and sometimes holding hands. More than once of an evening, in a moment of expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how this shy sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his life. But bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five were spoilsports, prevented him. After all, he supposed he would have to go through with College, and she would have to “come out,” before they could be married; so why complicate things, so long as he could see her? Sisters were teasing and unsympathetic beings, a brother worse, so there was no one to confide in. Ah! And this beastly divorce business! What a misfortune to have a name which other people hadn’t! If only he had been called Gordon or Scott or Howard or something fairly common! But Dartie⁠—there wasn’t another in the directory! One might as well have been named Morkin for all the covert it afforded! So matters went on, till one day in the middle of January the silver-roan palfrey and its rider were missing at the tryst. Lingering in the cold, he debated whether he should ride on to the house: But Jolly might be there, and the memory of their dark encounter was still fresh within him. One could not be always fighting with her brother! So he returned dismally to town and spent an evening plunged in gloom. At breakfast next day he noticed that his mother had on an unfamiliar dress and was wearing her hat. The dress was black with a glimpse of peacock blue, the hat black and large⁠—she looked exceptionally well. But when after breakfast she said to him, “Come in here, Val,” and led the way to the drawing-room, he was at once beset by qualms. Winifred carefully shut the door and passed her handkerchief over her lips; inhaling the violette de Parme with which it had been soaked, Val thought: “Has she found out about Holly?” + 

Her voice interrupted: + 

“Are you going to be nice to me, dear boy?” + 

Val grinned doubtfully. + 

“Will you come with me this morning.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I’ve got to see.⁠ ⁠…” began Val, but something in her face stopped him. “I say,” he said, “you don’t mean.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning.” Already!⁠—that damned business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since nobody ever mentioned it. In self-commiseration he stood picking little bits of skin off his fingers. Then noticing that his mother’s lips were all awry, he said impulsively: “All right, mother; I’ll come. The brutes!” What brutes he did not know, but the expression exactly summed up their joint feeling, and restored a measure of equanimity. + 

“I suppose I’d better change into a ‘shooter,’ ” he muttered, escaping to his room. He put on the “shooter,” a higher collar, a pearl pin, and his neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous accompaniment. Looking at himself in the glass, he said, “Well, I’m damned if I’m going to show anything!” and went down. He found his grandfather’s carriage at the door, and his mother in furs, with the appearance of one going to a Mansion House Assembly. They seated themselves side by side in the closed barouche, and all the way to the Courts of Justice Val made but one allusion to the business in hand. “There’ll be nothing about those pearls, will there?” + 

The little tufted white tails of Winifred’s muff began to shiver. + 

“Oh, no,” she said, “it’ll be quite harmless today. Your grandmother wanted to come too, but I wouldn’t let her. I thought you could take care of me. You look so nice, Val. Just pull your coat collar up a little more at the back⁠—that’s right.” + 

“If they bully you.⁠ ⁠…” began Val. + 

“Oh! they won’t. I shall be very cool. It’s the only way.” + 

“They won’t want me to give evidence or anything?” + 

“No, dear; it’s all arranged.” And she patted his hand. The determined front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in Val’s chest, and he busied himself in drawing his gloves off and on. He had taken what he now saw was the wrong pair to go with his spats; they should have been grey, but were deerskin of a dark tan; whether to keep them on or not he could not decide. They arrived soon after ten. It was his first visit to the Law Courts, and the building struck him at once. + 

“By Jove!” he said as they passed into the hall, “this’d make four or five jolly good racket courts.” + 

Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs. + 

“Here you are!” he said, without shaking hands, as if the event had made them too familiar for such formalities. “It’s Happerly Browne, Court I. We shall be on first.” + 

A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing now in the top of Val’s chest, but he followed his mother and uncle doggedly, looking at no more than he could help, and thinking that the place smelled fuggy. People seemed to be lurking everywhere, and he plucked Soames by the sleeve. + 

“I say, Uncle, you’re not going to let those beastly papers in, are you?” + 

Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to silence in its time. + 

“In here,” he said. “You needn’t take off your furs, Winifred.” + 

Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up. In this confounded hole everybody⁠—and there were a good many of them⁠—seemed sitting on everybody else’s knee, though really divided from each other by pews; and Val had a feeling that they might all slip down together into the well. This, however, was but a momentary vision⁠—of mahogany, and black gowns, and white blobs of wigs and faces and papers, all rather secret and whispery⁠—before he was sitting next his mother in the front row, with his back to it all, glad of her violette de Parme, and taking off his gloves for the last time. His mother was looking at him; he was suddenly conscious that she had really wanted him there next to her, and that he counted for something in this business. + 

All right! He would show them! Squaring his shoulders, he crossed his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats. But just then an “old Johnny” in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite, and he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand up with everybody else. + 

“Dartie versus Dartie!” + 

It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one’s name called out like this in public! And, suddenly conscious that someone nearly behind him had begun talking about his family, he screwed his face round to see an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he were eating his own words⁠—queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man he had seen once or twice dining at Park Lane and punishing the port; he knew now where they dug them up. All the same he found the old buffer quite fascinating, and would have continued to stare if his mother had not touched his arm. Reduced to gazing before him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge’s face instead. Why should that old “sportsman” with his sarcastic mouth and his quick-moving eyes have the power to meddle with their private affairs⁠—hadn’t he affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as nasty? And there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated individualism of his breed. The voice behind him droned along: “Differences about money matters⁠—extravagance of the respondent” (What a word! Was that his father?)⁠—“strained situation⁠—frequent absences on the part of Mr. Dartie. My client, very rightly, your Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course⁠—but lead to ruin⁠—remonstrated⁠—gambling at cards and on the racecourse⁠—” (“That’s right!” thought Val, “pile it on!”) “Crisis early in October, when the respondent wrote her this letter from his Club.” Val sat up and his ears burned. “I propose to read it with the emendations necessary to the epistle of a gentleman who has been⁠—shall we say dining, me Lud?” + 

“Old brute!” thought Val, flushing deeper; “you’re not paid to make jokes!” + 

“ ‘You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house. I am leaving the country tomorrow. It’s played out’⁠—an expression, your Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who have not met with conspicuous success.” + 

“Sniggering owls!” thought Val, and his flush deepened. + 

“ ‘I am tired of being insulted by you.’ My client will tell your Ludship that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him ‘the limit’⁠—a very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all the circumstances.” + 

Val glanced sideways at his mother’s impassive face, it had a hunted look in the eyes. “Poor mother,” he thought, and touched her arm with his own. The voice behind droned on. + 

“ ‘I am going to live a new life.⁠—M. D.’ ” + 

“And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship Tuscarora for Buenos Aires. Since then we have nothing from him but a cabled refusal in answer to the letter which my client wrote the following day in great distress, begging him to return to her. With your Ludship’s permission, I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the box.” + 

When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and say: “Look here! I’m going to see you jolly well treat her decently.” He subdued it, however; heard her saying, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” and looked up. She made a rich figure of it, in her furs and large hat, with a slight flush on her cheekbones, calm, matter-of-fact; and he felt proud of her thus confronting all these “confounded lawyers.” The examination began. Knowing that this was only the preliminary to divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the questions framed so as to give the impression that she really wanted his father back. It seemed to him that they were “foxing Old Bagwigs finely.” + 

And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly: + 

“Now, why did your husband leave you⁠—not because you called him ‘the limit,’ you know?” + 

Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving his face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told him that the issue was in peril. Had Uncle Soames and the old buffer behind made a mess of it? His mother was speaking with a slight drawl. + 

“No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time.” + 

“What had gone on?” + 

“Our differences about money.” + 

“But you supplied the money. Do you suggest that he left you to better his position?” + 

“The brute! The old brute, and nothing but the brute!” thought Val suddenly. “He smells a rat—he’s trying to get at the pastry!” And his heart stood still. If⁠—if he did, then, of course, he would know that his mother didn’t really want his father back. His mother spoke again, a thought more fashionably. + 

“No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money. It took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last⁠—and when he did.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I see, you had refused. But you’ve sent him some since.” + 

“My Lord, I wanted him back.” + 

“And you thought that would bring him?” + 

“I don’t know, my Lord, I acted on my father’s advice.” + 

Something in the Judge’s face, in the sound of the papers behind him, in the sudden crossing of his uncle’s legs, told Val that she had made just the right answer. “Crafty!” he thought; “by Jove, what humbug it all is!” + 

The Judge was speaking: + 

“Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie. Are you still fond of your husband?” + 

Val’s hands, slack behind him, became fists. What business had that Judge to make things human suddenly? To make his mother speak out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn’t know herself, before all these people! It wasn’t decent. His mother answered, rather low: “Yes, my Lord.” Val saw the Judge nod. “Wish I could take a cock-shy at your head!” he thought irreverently, as his mother came back to her seat beside him. Witnesses to his father’s departure and continued absence followed⁠—one of their own maids even, which struck Val as particularly beastly; there was more talking, all humbug; and then the Judge pronounced the decree for restitution, and they got up to go. Val walked out behind his mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level best to despise everybody. His mother’s voice in the corridor roused him from an angry trance. + 

“You behaved beautifully, dear. It was such a comfort to have you. Your uncle and I are going to lunch.” + 

“All right,” said Val; “I shall have time to go and see that fellow.” And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs and out into the air. He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the Goat’s Club. His thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before her brother showed her this thing in tomorrow’s paper. + 

When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the Cheshire Cheese. He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr. Bellby. At that early hour of noon they would have it to themselves, and Winifred had thought it would be “amusing” to see this far-famed hostelry. Having ordered a light repast, to the consternation of the waiter, they awaited its arrival together with that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after the hour and a half’s suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity. Mr. Bellby entered presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were glum. Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was the matter with that! + 

“Quite,” said Soames in a suitably low voice, “but we shall have to begin again to get evidence. He’ll probably try the divorce⁠—it will look fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from the start. His questions showed well enough that he doesn’t like this restitution dodge.” + 

“Pho!” said Mr. Bellby cheerily, “he’ll forget! Why, man, he’ll have tried a hundred cases between now and then. Besides, he’s bound by precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is satisfactory. We won’t let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge of the facts. Dreamer did it very nicely⁠—he’s got a fatherly touch about um!” + 

Soames nodded. + 

“And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie,” went on Mr. Bellby; “ye’ve a natural gift for giving evidence. Steady as a rock.” + 

Here the waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and the remark: “I ’urried up the pudden, sir. You’ll find plenty o’ lark in it today.” + 

Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose. But Soames and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of gravified brown masses, touching them gingerly with their forks in the hope of distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little song-givers. Having begun, however, they found they were hungrier than they thought, and finished the lot, with a glass of port apiece. Conversation turned on the war. Soames thought Ladysmith would fall, and it might last a year. Bellby thought it would be over by the summer. Both agreed that they wanted more men. There was nothing for it but complete victory, since it was now a question of prestige. Winifred brought things back to more solid ground by saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come on till after the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the boys would have forgotten about it before Val had to go up again; the London season too would be over. The lawyers reassured her, an interval of six months was necessary⁠—after that the earlier the better. People were now beginning to come in, and they parted⁠—Soames to the city, Bellby to his chambers, Winifred in a hansom to Park Lane to let her mother know how she had fared. The issue had been so satisfactory on the whole that it was considered advisable to tell James, who never failed to say day after day that he didn’t know about Winifred’s affair, he couldn’t tell. As his sands ran out, the importance of mundane matters became increasingly grave to him, as if he were feeling: “I must make the most of it, and worry well; I shall soon have nothing to worry about.” + 

He received the report grudgingly. It was a newfangled way of going about things, and he didn’t know! But he gave Winifred a cheque, saying: + 

“I expect you’ll have a lot of expense. That’s a new hat you’ve got on. Why doesn’t Val come and see us?” + 

Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon. And, going home, she sought her bedroom where she could be alone. Now that her husband had been ordered back into her custody with a view to putting him away from her forever, she would try once more to find out from her sore and lonely heart what she really wanted. + 

VIII + 

The Challenge + 

The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out while Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would canter on to the usual tryst. His spirits were rising rapidly. There had been nothing so very terrible in the morning’s proceedings beyond the general disgrace of violated privacy. “If we were engaged!” he thought, “what happens wouldn’t matter.” He felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and clamours at the results of matrimony, and hastens to get married. And he galloped over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be late. But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully. He could not go back without seeing her today! Emerging from the Park, he proceeded towards Robin Hill. He could not make up his mind for whom to ask. Suppose her father were back, or her sister or brother were in! He decided to gamble, and ask for them all first, so that if he were in luck and they were not there, it would be quite natural in the end to ask for Holly; while if any of them were in⁠—an “excuse for a ride” must be his saving grace. + 

“Only Miss Holly is in, sir.” + 

“Oh! thanks. Might I take my horse round to the stables? And would you say⁠—her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie.” + 

When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy. She led him to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat. + 

“I’ve been awfully anxious,” said Val in a low voice. “What’s the matter?” + 

“Jolly knows about our riding.” + 

“Is he in?” + 

“No; but I expect he will be soon.” + 

“Then⁠—!” cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand. She tried to withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at him wistfully. + 

“First of all,” he said, “I want to tell you something about my family. My Dad, you know, isn’t altogether⁠—I mean, he’s left my mother and they’re trying to divorce him; so they’ve ordered him to come back, you see. You’ll see that in the paper tomorrow.” + 

Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand squeezed his. But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he hurried on: + 

“Of course there’s nothing very much at present, but there will be, I expect, before it’s over; divorce suits are beastly, you know. I wanted to tell you, because⁠—because⁠—you ought to know⁠—if⁠—” and he began to stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, “if⁠—if you’re going to be a darling and love me, Holly. I love you⁠—ever so; and I want to be engaged.” He had done it in a manner so inadequate that he could have punched his own head; and dropping on his knees, he tried to get nearer to that soft, troubled face. “You do love me⁠—don’t you? If you don’t I.⁠ ⁠…” There was a moment of silence and suspense, so awful that he could hear the sound of a mowing-machine far out on the lawn pretending there was grass to cut. Then she swayed forward; her free hand touched his hair, and he gasped: “Oh, Holly!” + 

Her answer was very soft: “Oh, Val!” + 

He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood, as the masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched, trembly. He was afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break the spell; lest, if he did, she should shrink and deny her own surrender⁠—so tremulous was she in his grasp, with her eyelids closed and his lips nearing them. Her eyes opened, seemed to swim a little; he pressed his lips to hers. Suddenly he sprang up; there had been footsteps, a sort of startled grunt. He looked round. No one! But the long curtains which barred off the outer hall were quivering. + 

“My God! Who was that?” + 

Holly too was on her feet. + 

“Jolly, I expect,” she whispered. + 

Val clenched fists and resolution. + 

“All right!” he said, “I don’t care a bit now we’re engaged,” and striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside. There at the fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately turned. Val went forward. Jolly faced round on him. + 

“I beg your pardon for hearing,” he said. + 

With the best intentions in the world, Val could not help admiring him at that moment; his face was clear, his voice quiet, he looked somehow distinguished, as if acting up to principle. + 

“Well!” Val said abruptly, “it’s nothing to you.” + 

“Oh!” said Jolly; “you come this way,” and he crossed the hall. Val followed. At the study door he felt a touch on his arm; Holly’s voice said: + 

“I’m coming too.” + 

“No,” said Jolly. + 

“Yes,” said Holly. + 

Jolly opened the door, and they all three went in. Once in the little room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of the worn Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each other, quite incapable of seeing any humour in the situation. + 

Val broke the silence. + 

“Holly and I are engaged.” + 

Jolly stepped back and leaned against the lintel of the window. + 

“This is our house,” he said; “I’m not going to insult you in it. But my father’s away. I’m in charge of my sister. You’ve taken advantage of me.” + 

“I didn’t mean to,” said Val hotly. + 

“I think you did,” said Jolly. “If you hadn’t meant to, you’d have spoken to me, or waited for my father to come back.” + 

“There were reasons,” said Val. + 

“What reasons?” + 

“About my family⁠—I’ve just told her. I wanted her to know before things happen.” + 

Jolly suddenly became less distinguished. + 

“You’re kids,” he said, “and you know you are.” + 

“I am not a kid,” said Val. + 

“You are⁠—you’re not twenty.” + 

“Well, what are you?” + 

“I am twenty,” said Jolly. + 

“Only just; anyway, I’m as good a man as you.” + 

Jolly’s face crimsoned, then clouded. Some struggle was evidently taking place in him; and Val and Holly stared at him, so clearly was that struggle marked; they could even hear him breathing. Then his face cleared up and became oddly resolute. + 

“We’ll see that,” he said. “I dare you to do what I’m going to do.” + 

“Dare me?” + 

Jolly smiled. “Yes,” he said, “dare you; and I know very well you won’t.” + 

A stab of misgiving shot through Val; this was riding very blind. + 

“I haven’t forgotten that you’re a fire-eater,” said Jolly slowly, “and I think that’s about all you are; or that you called me a pro-Boer.” + 

Val heard a gasp above the sound of his own hard breathing, and saw Holly’s face poked a little forward, very pale, with big eyes. + 

“Yes,” went on Jolly with a sort of smile, “we shall soon see. I’m going to join the Imperial Yeomanry, and I dare you to do the same, Mr. Val Dartie.” + 

Val’s head jerked on its stem. It was like a blow between the eyes, so utterly unthought of, so extreme and ugly in the midst of his dreaming; and he looked at Holly with eyes grown suddenly, touchingly haggard. + 

“Sit down!” said Jolly. “Take your time! Think it over well.” And he himself sat down on the arm of his grandfather’s chair. + 

Val did not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his breeches’ pockets⁠—hands clenched and quivering. The full awfulness of this decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with double knocks as of an angry postman. If he did not take that “dare” he was disgraced in Holly’s eyes, and in the eyes of that young enemy, her brute of a brother. Yet if he took it, ah! then all would vanish⁠—her face, her eyes, her hair, her kisses just begun! + 

“Take your time,” said Jolly again; “I don’t want to be unfair.” + 

And they both looked at Holly. She had recoiled against the bookshelves reaching to the ceiling; her dark head leaned against Gibbon’s Roman Empire, her eyes in a sort of soft grey agony were fixed on Val. And he, who had not much gift of insight, had suddenly a gleam of vision. She would be proud of her brother⁠—that enemy! She would be ashamed of him! His hands came out of his pockets as if lifted by a spring. + 

“All right!” he said. “Done!” + 

Holly’s face⁠—oh! it was queer! He saw her flush, start forward. He had done the right thing⁠—her face was shining with wistful admiration. Jolly stood up and made a little bow as who should say: “You’ve passed.” + 

“Tomorrow, then,” he said, “we’ll go together.” + 

Recovering from the impetus which had carried him to that decision, Val looked at him maliciously from under his lashes. “All right,” he thought, “one to you. I shall have to join⁠—but I’ll get back on you somehow.” And he said with dignity: “I shall be ready.” + 

“We’ll meet at the main Recruiting Office, then,” said Jolly, “at twelve o’clock.” And, opening the window, he went out on to the terrace, conforming to the creed which had made him retire when he surprised them in the hall. + 

The confusion in the mind of Val thus left alone with her for whom he had paid this sudden price was extreme. The mood of “showing-off” was still, however, uppermost. One must do the wretched thing with an air. + 

“We shall get plenty of riding and shooting, anyway,” he said; “that’s one comfort.” And it gave him a sort of grim pleasure to hear the sigh which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart. + 

“Oh! the war’ll soon be over,” he said; “perhaps we shan’t even have to go out. I don’t care, except for you.” He would be out of the way of that beastly divorce. It was an ill-wind! He felt her warm hand slip into his. Jolly thought he had stopped their loving each other, did he? He held her tightly round the waist, looking at her softly through his lashes, smiling to cheer her up, promising to come down and see her soon, feeling somehow six inches taller and much more in command of her than he had ever dared feel before. Many times he kissed her before he mounted and rode back to town. So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does the possessive instinct flourish and grow. + 

IX + 

Dinner at James’ + 

Dinner parties were not now given at James’ in Park Lane⁠—to every house the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer “up to it”; no more can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above twenty fine white expanses; nor does the household cat any longer wonder why she is suddenly shut up. + 

So with something like excitement Emily⁠—who at seventy would still have liked a little feast and fashion now and then⁠—ordered dinner for six instead of two, herself wrote a number of foreign words on cards, and arranged the flowers⁠—mimosa from the Riviera, and white Roman hyacinths not from Rome. There would only be, of course, James and herself, Soames, Winifred, Val, and Imogen⁠—but she liked to pretend a little and dally in imagination with the glory of the past. She so dressed herself that James remarked: + 

“What are you putting on that thing for? You’ll catch cold.” + 

But Emily knew that the necks of women are protected by love of shining, unto fourscore years, and she only answered: + 

“Let me put you on one of those dickies I got you, James; then you’ll only have to change your trousers, and put on your velvet coat, and there you’ll be. Val likes you to look nice.” + 

“Dicky!” said James. “You’re always wasting your money on something.” + 

But he suffered the change to be made till his neck also shone, murmuring vaguely: + 

“He’s an extravagant chap, I’m afraid.” + 

A little brighter in the eye, with rather more colour than usual in his cheeks, he took his seat in the drawing-room to wait for the sound of the front-door bell. + 

“I’ve made it a proper dinner party,” Emily said comfortably; “I thought it would be good practice for Imogen⁠—she must get used to it now she’s coming out.” + 

James uttered an indeterminate sound, thinking of Imogen as she used to climb about his knee or pull Christmas crackers with him. + 

“She’ll be pretty,” he muttered, “I shouldn’t wonder.” + 

“She is pretty,” said Emily; “she ought to make a good match.” + 

“There you go,” murmured James; “she’d much better stay at home and look after her mother.” A second Dartie carrying off his pretty granddaughter would finish him! He had never quite forgiven Emily for having been as much taken in by Montague Dartie as he himself had been. + 

“Where’s Warmson?” he said suddenly. “I should like a glass of Madeira tonight.” + 

“There’s champagne, James.” + 

James shook his head. “No body,” he said; “I can’t get any good out of it.” + 

Emily reached forward on her side of the fire and rang the bell. + 

“Your master would like a bottle of Madeira opened, Warmson.” + 

“No, no!” said James, the tips of his ears quivering with vehemence, and his eyes fixed on an object seen by him alone. “Look here, Warmson, you go to the inner cellar, and on the middle shelf of the end bin on the left you’ll see seven bottles; take the one in the centre, and don’t shake it. It’s the last of the Madeira I had from Mr. Jolyon when we came in here⁠—never been moved; it ought to be in prime condition still; but I don’t know, I can’t tell.” + 

“Very good, sir,” responded the withdrawing Warmson. + 

“I was keeping it for our golden wedding,” said James suddenly, “but I shan’t live three years at my age.” + 

“Nonsense, James,” said Emily, “don’t talk like that.” + 

“I ought to have got it up myself,” murmured James, “he’ll shake it as likely as not.” And he sank into silent recollection of long moments among the open gas-jets, the cobwebs and the good smell of wine-soaked corks, which had been appetiser to so many feasts. In the wine from that cellar was written the history of the forty odd years since he had come to the Park Lane house with his young bride, and of the many generations of friends and acquaintances who had passed into the unknown; its depleted bins preserved the record of family festivity⁠—all the marriages, births, deaths of his kith and kin. And when he was gone there it would be, and he didn’t know what would become of it. It’d be drunk or spoiled, he shouldn’t wonder! + 

From that deep reverie the entrance of his son dragged him, followed very soon by that of Winifred and her two eldest. + 

They went down arm-in-arm⁠—James with Imogen, the debutante, because his pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred; Emily with Val, whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened. This was to be a proper full “blowout” with fizz and port! And he felt in need of it, after what he had done that day, as yet undivulged. After the first glass or two it became pleasant to have this bombshell up his sleeve, this piece of sensational patriotism, or example, rather, of personal daring, to display⁠—for his pleasure in what he had done for his Queen and Country was so far entirely personal. He was now a “blood,” indissolubly connected with guns and horses; he had a right to swagger⁠—not, of course, that he was going to. He should just announce it quietly, when there was a pause. And, glancing down the menu, he determined on Bombe aux fraises as the proper moment; there would be a certain solemnity while they were eating that. Once or twice before they reached that rosy summit of the dinner he was attacked by remembrance that his grandfather was never told anything! Still, the old boy was drinking Madeira, and looking jolly fit! Besides, he ought to be pleased at this set-off to the disgrace of the divorce. The sight of his uncle opposite, too, was a sharp incentive. He was so far from being a sportsman that it would be worth a lot to see his face. Besides, better to tell his mother in this way than privately, which might upset them both! He was sorry for her, but after all one couldn’t be expected to feel much for others when one had to part from Holly. + 

His grandfather’s voice travelled to him thinly. “Val, try a little of the Madeira with your ice. You won’t get that up at college.” + 

Val watched the slow liquid filling his glass, the essential oil of the old wine glazing the surface; inhaled its aroma, and thought: “Now for it!” It was a rich moment. He sipped, and a gentle glow spread in his veins, already heated. With a rapid look round, he said, “I joined the Imperial Yeomanry today, Granny,” and emptied his glass as though drinking the health of his own act. + 

“What!” It was his mother’s desolate little word. + 

“Young Jolly Forsyte and I went down there together.” + 

“You didn’t sign?” from Uncle Soames. + 

“Rather! We go into camp on Monday.” + 

“I say!” cried Imogen. + 

All looked at James. He was leaning forward with his hand behind his ear. + 

“What’s that?” he said. “What’s he saying? I can’t hear.” + 

Emily reached forward to pat Val’s hand. + 

“It’s only that Val has joined the Yeomanry, James; it’s very nice for him. He’ll look his best in uniform.” + 

“Joined the⁠—rubbish!” came from James, tremulously loud. “You can’t see two yards before your nose. He⁠—he’ll have to go out there. Why! he’ll be fighting before he knows where he is.” + 

Val saw Imogen’s eyes admiring him, and his mother still and fashionable with her handkerchief before her lips. + 

Suddenly his uncle spoke. + 

“You’re under age.” + 

“I thought of that,” smiled Val; “I gave my age as twenty-one.” + 

He heard his grandmother’s admiring, “Well, Val, that was plucky of you;” was conscious of Warmson deferentially filling his champagne glass; and of his grandfather’s voice moaning: “I don’t know what’ll become of you if you go on like this.” + 

Imogen was patting his shoulder, his uncle looking at him sidelong; only his mother sat unmoving, till, affected by her stillness, Val said: + 

“It’s all right, you know; we shall soon have them on the run. I only hope I shall come in for something.” + 

He felt elated, sorry, tremendously important all at once. This would show Uncle Soames, and all the Forsytes, how to be sportsmen. He had certainly done something heroic and exceptional in giving his age as twenty-one. + 

Emily’s voice brought him back to earth. + 

“You mustn’t have a second glass, James. Warmson!” + 

“Won’t they be astonished at Timothy’s!” burst out Imogen. “I’d give anything to see their faces. Do you have a sword, Val, or only a popgun?” + 

“What made you?” + 

His uncle’s voice produced a slight chill in the pit of Val’s stomach. Made him? How answer that? He was grateful for his grandmother’s comfortable: + 

“Well, I think it’s very plucky of Val. I’m sure he’ll make a splendid soldier; he’s just the figure for it. We shall all be proud of him.” + 

“What had young Jolly Forsyte to do with it? Why did you go together?” pursued Soames, uncannily relentless. “I thought you weren’t friendly with him?” + 

“I’m not,” mumbled Val, “but I wasn’t going to be beaten by him.” He saw his uncle look at him quite differently, as if approving. His grandfather was nodding too, his grandmother tossing her head. They all approved of his not being beaten by that cousin of his. There must be a reason! Val was dimly conscious of some disturbing point outside his range of vision; as it might be, the unlocated centre of a cyclone. And, staring at his uncle’s face, he had a quite unaccountable vision of a woman with dark eyes, gold hair, and a white neck, who smelt nice, and had pretty silken clothes which he had liked feeling when he was quite small. By Jove, yes! Aunt Irene! She used to kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once, playfully, because he liked it⁠—so soft. His grandfather was speaking: + 

“What’s his father doing?” + 

“He’s away in Paris,” Val said, staring at the very queer expression on his uncle’s face, like⁠—like that of a snarling dog. + 

“Artists!” said James. The word coming from the very bottom of his soul, broke up the dinner. + 

Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-fruits of heroism, like medlars overripe. + 

She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor’s at once and have his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they gave him. But he could feel that she was very much upset. It was on his lips to console her with the spoken thought that he would be out of the way of that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen, and the knowledge that his mother would not be out of the way, restrained him. He felt aggrieved that she did not seem more proud of him. When Imogen had gone to bed, he risked the emotional. + 

“I’m awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother.” + 

“Well, I must make the best of it. We must try and get you a commission as soon as we can; then you won’t have to rough it so. Do you know any drill, Val?” + 

“Not a scrap.” + 

“I hope they won’t worry you much. I must take you about to get the things tomorrow. Good night; kiss me.” + 

With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, “I hope they won’t worry you much,” in his ears, he sat down to a cigarette, before a dying fire. The heat was out of him⁠—the glow of cutting a dash. It was all a damned heart-aching bore. “I’ll be even with that chap Jolly,” he thought, trailing up the stairs, past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob. + 

And soon only one of the diners at James’ was awake⁠—Soames, in his bedroom above his father’s. + 

So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris⁠—what was he doing there? Hanging round Irene! The last report from Polteed had hinted that there might be something soon. Could it be this? That fellow, with his beard and his cursed amused way of speaking⁠—son of the old man who had given him the nickname “Man of Property,” and bought the fatal house from him. Soames had ever resented having had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never forgiven his uncle for having bought it, or his cousin for living in it. + 

Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across the Park. Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of traffic; a frost coming; bare trees; a star or two. “I’ll see Polteed tomorrow,” he thought. “By God! I’m mad, I think, to want her still. That fellow! If⁠—? Um! No!” + 

X + 

Death of the Dog Balthasar + 

Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin Hill on Sunday morning. He had sent no word beforehand, so walked up from the station, entering his domain by the coppice gate. Coming to the log seat fashioned out of an old fallen trunk, he sat down, first laying his overcoat on it. + 

“Lumbago!” he thought; “that’s what love ends in at my time of life!” And suddenly Irene seemed very near, just as she had been that day of rambling at Fontainebleau when they had sat on a log to eat their lunch. Hauntingly near! Odour drawn out of fallen leaves by the pale-filtering sunlight soaked his nostrils. “I’m glad it isn’t spring,” he thought. With the scent of sap, and the song of birds, and the bursting of the blossoms, it would have been unbearable! “I hope I shall be over it by then, old fool that I am!” and picking up his coat, he walked on into the field. He passed the pond and mounted the hill slowly. + 

Near the top a hoarse barking greeted him. Up on the lawn above the fernery he could see his old dog Balthasar. The animal, whose dim eyes took his master for a stranger, was warning the world against him. Jolyon gave his special whistle. Even at that distance of a hundred yards and more he could see the dawning recognition in the obese brown-white body. The old dog got off his haunches, and his tail, close-curled over his back, began a feeble, excited fluttering; he came waddling forward, gathered momentum, and disappeared over the edge of the fernery. Jolyon expected to meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar was not there, and, rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery. On his fat side, looking up with eyes already glazing, the old dog lay. + 

“What is it, my poor old man?” cried Jolyon. Balthasar’s curled and fluffy tail just moved; his filming eyes seemed saying: “I can’t get up, master, but I’m glad to see you.” + 

Jolyon knelt down; his eyes, very dimmed, could hardly see the slowly ceasing heave of the dog’s side. He raised the head a little⁠—very heavy. + 

“What is it, dear man? Where are you hurt?” The tail fluttered once; the eyes lost the look of life. Jolyon passed his hands all over the inert warm bulk. There was nothing⁠—the heart had simply failed in that obese body from the emotion of his master’s return. Jolyon could feel the muzzle, where a few whitish bristles grew, cooling already against his lips. He stayed for some minutes kneeling; with his hand beneath the stiffening head. The body was very heavy when he bore it to the top of the field; leaves had drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of them; there was no wind, and they would keep him from curious eyes until the afternoon. “I’ll bury him myself,” he thought. Eighteen years had gone since he first went into the St. John’s Wood house with that tiny puppy in his pocket. Strange that the old dog should die just now! Was it an omen? He turned at the gate to look back at that russet mound, then went slowly towards the house, very choky in the throat. + 

June was at home; she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news of Jolly’s enlistment. His patriotism had conquered her feeling for the Boers. The atmosphere of his house was strange and pocketty when Jolyon came in and told them of the dog Balthasar’s death. The news had a unifying effect. A link with the past had snapped⁠—the dog Balthasar! Two of them could remember nothing before his day; to June he represented the last years of her grandfather; to Jolyon that life of domestic stress and aesthetic struggle before he came again into the kingdom of his father’s love and wealth! And he was gone! + 

In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out to the field. They chose a spot close to the russet mound, so that they need not carry him far, and, carefully cutting off the surface turf, began to dig. They dug in silence for ten minutes, and then rested. + 

“Well, old man,” said Jolyon, “so you thought you ought?” + 

“Yes,” answered Jolly; “I don’t want to a bit, of course.” + 

How exactly those words represented Jolyon’s own state of mind! + 

“I admire you for it, old boy. I don’t believe I should have done it at your age⁠—too much of a Forsyte, I’m afraid. But I suppose the type gets thinner with each generation. Your son, if you have one, may be a pure altruist; who knows?” + 

“He won’t be like me, then, Dad; I’m beastly selfish.” + 

“No, my dear, that you clearly are not.” Jolly shook his head, and they dug again. + 

“Strange life a dog’s,” said Jolyon suddenly: “The only four-footer with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!” + 

Jolly looked at his father. + 

“Do you believe in God, Dad? I’ve never known.” + 

At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to make a light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back tried by the digging. + 

“What do you mean by God?” he said; “there are two irreconcilable ideas of God. There’s the Unknowable Creative Principle⁠—one believes in That. And there’s the Sum of altruism in man⁠—naturally one believes in That.” + 

“I see. That leaves out Christ, doesn’t it?” + 

Jolyon stared. Christ, the link between those two ideas! Out of the mouth of babes! Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at last! The sublime poem of the Christ life was man’s attempt to join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God. And since the Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe, a worse link might have been chosen after all! Funny⁠—how one went through life without seeing it in that sort of way! + 

“What do you think, old man?” he said. + 

Jolly frowned. “Of course, my first year we talked a good bit about that sort of thing. But in the second year one gives it up; I don’t know why⁠—it’s awfully interesting.” + 

Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it his first year at Cambridge, and given it up in his second. + 

“I suppose,” said Jolly, “it’s the second God, you mean, that old Balthasar had a sense of.” + 

“Yes, or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of something outside himself.” + 

“But wasn’t that just selfish emotion, really?” + 

Jolyon shook his head. “No, dogs are not pure Forsytes, they love something outside themselves.” + 

Jolly smiled. + 

“Well, I think I’m one,” he said. “You know, I only enlisted because I dared Val Dartie to.” + 

“But why?” + 

“We bar each other,” said Jolly shortly. + 

“Ah!” muttered Jolyon. So the feud went on, unto the third generation⁠—this modern feud which had no overt expression? + 

“Shall I tell the boy about it?” he thought. But to what end⁠—if he had to stop short of his own part? + 

And Jolly thought: “It’s for Holly to let him know about that chap. If she doesn’t, it means she doesn’t want him told, and I should be sneaking. Anyway, I’ve stopped it. I’d better leave well alone!” + 

So they dug on in silence, till Jolyon said: + 

“Now, old man, I think it’s big enough.” And, resting on their spades, they gazed down into the hole where a few leaves had drifted already on a sunset wind. + 

“I can’t bear this part of it,” said Jolyon suddenly. + 

“Let me do it, Dad. He never cared much for me.” + 

Jolyon shook his head. + 

“We’ll lift him very gently, leaves and all. I’d rather not see him again. I’ll take his head. Now!” + 

With extreme care they raised the old dog’s body, whose faded tan and white showed here and there under the leaves stirred by the wind. They laid it, heavy, cold, and unresponsive, in the grave, and Jolly spread more leaves over it, while Jolyon, deeply afraid to show emotion before his son, began quickly shovelling the earth on to that still shape. There went the past! If only there were a joyful future to look forward to! It was like stamping down earth on one’s own life. They replaced the turf carefully on the smooth little mound, and, grateful that they had spared each other’s feelings, returned to the house arm-in-arm. + 

XI + 

Timothy Stays the Rot + 

On Forsyte ’Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together with the report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become a Red Cross nurse. These events were so extreme, so subversive of pure Forsyteism, as to have a binding effect upon the family, and Timothy’s was thronged next Sunday afternoon by members trying to find out what they thought about it all, and exchange with each other a sense of family credit. Giles and Jesse Hayman would no longer defend the coast but go to South Africa quite soon; Jolly and Val would be following in April; as to June⁠—well, you never knew what she would really do. + 

The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news from the seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in startling fashion by Timothy. The youngest of the old Forsytes⁠—scarcely eighty, in fact popularly supposed to resemble their father, Superior Dosset, even in his best-known characteristic of drinking sherry⁠—had been invisible for so many years that he was almost mythical. A long generation had elapsed since the risks of a publisher’s business had worked on his nerves at the age of forty, so that he had got out with a mere thirty-five thousand pounds in the world, and started to make his living by careful investment. Putting by every year, at compound interest, he had doubled his capital in forty years without having once known what it was like to shake in his shoes over money matters. He was now putting aside some two thousand a year, and, with the care he was taking of himself, expected, so Aunt Hester said, to double his capital again before he died. What he would do with it then, with his sisters dead and himself dead, was often mockingly queried by free spirits such as Francie, Euphemia, or young Nicholas’ second, Christopher, whose spirit was so free that he had actually said he was going on the stage. All admitted, however, that this was best known to Timothy himself, and possibly to Soames, who never divulged a secret. + 

Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and robust appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion, grey hair, and little of the refinement of feature with which most of the Forsytes had been endowed by Superior Dosset’s wife, a woman of some beauty and a gentle temperament. It was known that he had taken surprising interest in the war, sticking flags into a map ever since it began, and there was uneasiness as to what would happen if the English were driven into the sea, when it would be almost impossible for him to put the flags in the right places. As to his knowledge of family movements or his views about them, little was known, save that Aunt Hester was always declaring that he was very upset. It was, then, in the nature of a portent when Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after the evacuation of Spion Kop, became conscious, one after the other, of a presence seated in the only really comfortable armchair, back to the light, concealing the lower part of his face with a large hand, and were greeted by the awed voice of Aunt Hester: + 

“Your Uncle Timothy, my dear.” + 

Timothy’s greeting to them all was somewhat identical; and rather, as it were, passed over by him than expressed: + 

“How de do? How de do? ’Xcuse me gettin’ up!” + 

Francie was present, and Eustace had come in his car; Winifred had brought Imogen, breaking the ice of the restitution proceedings with the warmth of family appreciation at Val’s enlistment; and Marian Tweetyman with the last news of Giles and Jesse. These with Aunt Juley and Hester, young Nicholas, Euphemia, and⁠—of all people!⁠—George, who had come with Eustace in the car, constituted an assembly worthy of the family’s palmiest days. There was not one chair vacant in the whole of the little drawing-room, and anxiety was felt lest someone else should arrive. + 

The constraint caused by Timothy’s presence having worn off a little, conversation took a military turn. George asked Aunt Juley when she was going out with the Red Cross, almost reducing her to a state of gaiety; whereon he turned to Nicholas and said: + 

“Young Nick’s a warrior bold, isn’t he? When’s he going to don the wild khaki?” + 

Young Nicholas, smiling with a sort of sweet deprecation, intimated that of course his mother was very anxious. + 

“The Dromios are off, I hear,” said George, turning to Marian Tweetyman; “we shall all be there soon. En avant, the Forsytes! Roll, bowl, or pitch! Who’s for a cooler?” + 

Aunt Juley gurgled, George was so droll! Should Hester get Timothy’s map? Then he could show them all where they were. + 

At a sound from Timothy, interpreted as assent, Aunt Hester left the room. + 

George pursued his image of the Forsyte advance, addressing Timothy as Field Marshal; and Imogen, whom he had noted at once for “a pretty filly,”⁠—as Vivandière; and holding his top hat between his knees, he began to beat it with imaginary drumsticks. The reception accorded to his fantasy was mixed. All laughed⁠—George was licensed; but all felt that the family was being “rotted”; and this seemed to them unnatural, now that it was going to give five of its members to the service of the Queen. George might go too far; and there was relief when he got up, offered his arm to Aunt Juley, marched up to Timothy, saluted him, kissed his aunt with mock passion, said, “Oh! what a treat, dear papa! Come on, Eustace!” and walked out, followed by the grave and fastidious Eustace, who had never smiled. + 

Aunt Juley’s bewildered, “Fancy not waiting for the map! You mustn’t mind him, Timothy. He’s so droll!” broke the hush, and Timothy removed the hand from his mouth. + 

“I don’t know what things are comin’ to,” he was heard to say. “What’s all this about goin’ out there? That’s not the way to beat those Boers.” + 

Francie alone had the hardihood to observe: “What is, then, Uncle Timothy?” + 

“All this newfangled volunteerin’ and expense⁠—lettin’ money out of the country.” + 

Just then Aunt Hester brought in the map, handling it like a baby with eruptions. With the assistance of Euphemia it was laid on the piano, a small Colwood grand, last played on, it was believed, the summer before Aunt Ann died, thirteen years ago. Timothy rose. He walked over to the piano, and stood looking at his map while they all gathered round. + 

“There you are,” he said; “that’s the position up to date; and very poor it is. H’m!” + 

“Yes,” said Francie, greatly daring, “but how are you going to alter it, Uncle Timothy, without more men?” + 

“Men!” said Timothy; “you don’t want men⁠—wastin’ the country’s money. You want a Napoleon, he’d settle it in a month.” + 

“But if you haven’t got him, Uncle Timothy?” + 

“That’s their business,” replied Timothy. “What have we kept the Army up for⁠—to eat their heads off in time of peace! They ought to be ashamed of themselves, comin’ on the country to help them like this! Let every man stick to his business, and we shall get on.” + 

And looking round him, he added almost angrily: + 

“Volunteerin’, indeed! Throwin’ good money after bad! We must save! Conserve energy that’s the only way.” And with a prolonged sound, not quite a sniff and not quite a snort, he trod on Euphemia’s toe, and went out, leaving a sensation and a faint scent of barley-sugar behind him. + 

The effect of something said with conviction by one who has evidently made a sacrifice to say it is ever considerable. And the eight Forsytes left behind, all women except young Nicholas, were silent for a moment round the map. Then Francie said: + 

“Really, I think he’s right, you know. After all, what is the Army for? They ought to have known. It’s only encouraging them.” + 

“My dear!” cried Aunt Juley, “but they’ve been so progressive. Think of their giving up their scarlet. They were always so proud of it. And now they all look like convicts. Hester and I were saying only yesterday we were sure they must feel it very much. Fancy what the Iron Duke would have said!” + 

“The new colour’s very smart,” said Winifred; “Val looks quite nice in his.” + 

Aunt Juley sighed. + 

“I do so wonder what Jolyon’s boy is like. To think we’ve never seen him! His father must be so proud of him.” + 

“His father’s in Paris,” said Winifred. + 

Aunt Hester’s shoulder was seen to mount suddenly, as if to ward off her sister’s next remark, for Juley’s crumpled cheeks had gushed. + 

“We had dear little Mrs. MacAnder here yesterday, just back from Paris. And whom d’you think she saw there in the street? You’ll never guess.” + 

“We shan’t try, Auntie,” said Euphemia. + 

“Irene! Imagine! After all this time; walking with a fair beard.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Auntie! you’ll kill me! A fair beard.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I was going to say,” said Aunt Juley severely, “a fair-bearded gentleman. And not a day older; she was always so pretty,” she added, with a sort of lingering apology. + 

“Oh! tell us about her, Auntie,” cried Imogen; “I can just remember her. She’s the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn’t she? And they’re such fun.” + 

Aunt Hester sat down. Really, Juley had done it now! + 

“She wasn’t much of a skeleton as I remember her,” murmured Euphemia, “extremely well-covered.” + 

“My dear!” said Aunt Juley, “what a peculiar way of putting it⁠—not very nice.” + 

“No, but what was she like?” persisted Imogen. + 

“I’ll tell you, my child,” said Francie; “a kind of modern Venus, very well-dressed.” + 

Euphemia said sharply: “Venus was never dressed, and she had blue eyes of melting sapphire.” + 

At this juncture Nicholas took his leave. + 

“Mrs. Nick is awfully strict,” said Francie with a laugh. + 

“She has six children,” said Aunt Juley; “it’s very proper she should be careful.” + 

“Was Uncle Soames awfully fond of her?” pursued the inexorable Imogen, moving her dark luscious eyes from face to face. + 

Aunt Hester made a gesture of despair, just as Aunt Juley answered: + 

“Yes, your Uncle Soames was very much attached to her.” + 

“I suppose she ran off with someone?” + 

“No, certainly not; that is⁠—not precisely.” + 

“What did she do, then, Auntie?” + 

“Come along, Imogen,” said Winifred, “we must be getting back.” + 

But Aunt Juley interjected resolutely: “She⁠—she didn’t behave at all well.” + 

“Oh, bother!” cried Imogen; “that’s as far as I ever get.” + 

“Well, my dear,” said Francie, “she had a love affair which ended with the young man’s death; and then she left your uncle. I always rather liked her.” + 

“She used to give me chocolates,” murmured Imogen, “and smell nice.” + 

“Of course!” remarked Euphemia. + 

“Not of course at all!” replied Francie, who used a particularly expensive essence of gillyflower herself. + 

“I can’t think what we are about,” said Aunt Juley, raising her hands, “talking of such things!” + 

“Was she divorced?” asked Imogen from the door. + 

“Certainly not,” cried Aunt Juley; “that is⁠—certainly not.” + 

A sound was heard over by the far door. Timothy had reentered the back drawing-room. “I’ve come for my map,” he said. “Who’s been divorced?” + 

“No one, Uncle,” replied Francie with perfect truth. + 

Timothy took his map off the piano. + 

“Don’t let’s have anything of that sort in the family,” he said. “All this enlistin’s bad enough. The country’s breakin’ up; I don’t know what we’re comin’ to.” He shook a thick finger at the room: “Too many women nowadays, and they don’t know what they want.” + 

So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went out as if afraid of being answered. + 

The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued murmur, out of which emerged Francie’s, “Really, the Forsytes⁠—!” and Aunt Juley’s: “He must have his feet in mustard and hot water tonight, Hester; will you tell Jane? The blood has gone to his head again, I’m afraid.⁠ ⁠…” + 

That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after dinner, she dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up: + 

“Hester, I can’t think where I’ve heard that dear Soames wants Irene to come back to him again. Who was it told us that George had made a funny drawing of him with the words, ‘He won’t be happy till he gets it.’ ” + 

“Eustace,” answered Aunt Hester from behind the Times; “he had it in his pocket, but he wouldn’t show it us.” + 

Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating. The clock ticked, the Times crackled, the fire sent forth its rustling purr. Aunt Juley dropped another stitch. + 

“Hester,” she said, “I have had such a dreadful thought.” + 

“Then don’t tell me,” said Aunt Hester quickly. + 

“Oh! but I must. You can’t think how dreadful!” Her voice sank to a whisper: + 

“Jolyon⁠—Jolyon, they say, has a⁠—has a fair beard, now.” + 

XII + 

Progress of the Chase + 

Two days after the dinner at James’, Mr. Polteed provided Soames with food for thought. + 

“A gentleman,” he said, consulting the key concealed in his left hand, “47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17 during the last month in Paris. But at present there seems to have been nothing very conclusive. The meetings have all been in public places, without concealment⁠—restaurants, the Opera, the Comique, the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and so forth. She has not yet been traced to his rooms, nor vice versa. They went to Fontainebleau⁠—but nothing of value. In short, the situation is promising, but requires patience.” And, looking up suddenly, he added: + 

“One rather curious point⁠—47 has the same name as⁠—er⁠—31!” + 

“The fellow knows I’m her husband,” thought Soames. + 

“Christian name⁠—an odd one⁠—Jolyon,” continued Mr. Polteed. “We know his address in Paris and his residence here. We don’t wish, of course, to be running a wrong hare.” + 

“Go on with it, but be careful,” said Soames doggedly. + 

Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his secret made him all the more reticent. + 

“Excuse me,” said Mr. Polteed, “I’ll just see if there’s anything fresh in.” + 

He returned with some letters. Relocking the door, he glanced at the envelopes. + 

“Yes, here’s a personal one from 19 to myself.” + 

“Well?” said Soames. + 

“Um!” said Mr. Polteed, “she says: ‘47 left for England today. Address on his baggage: Robin Hill. Parted from 17 in Louvre Gallery at 3:30; nothing very striking. Thought it best to stay and continue observation of 17. You will deal with 47 in England if you think desirable, no doubt.’ ” And Mr. Polteed lifted an unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of business. “Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful makeup. Not cheap, but earns her money well. There’s no suspicion of being shadowed so far. But after a time, as you know, sensitive people are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything definite to go on. I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and keeping an eye on 47. We can’t get at correspondence without great risk. I hardly advise that at this stage. But you can tell your client that it’s looking up very well.” And again his narrowed eyes gleamed at his taciturn customer. + 

“No,” said Soames suddenly, “I prefer that you should keep the watch going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with this end.” + 

“Very well,” replied Mr. Polteed, “we can do it.” + 

“What⁠—what is the manner between them?” + 

“I’ll read you what she says,” said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau drawer and taking out a file of papers; “she sums it up somewhere confidentially. Yes, here it is! ‘17 very attractive⁠—conclude 47, longer in the tooth’ (slang for age, you know)⁠—‘distinctly gone⁠—waiting his time⁠—17 perhaps holding off for terms, impossible to say without knowing more. But inclined to think on the whole⁠—doesn’t know her mind⁠—likely to act on impulse some day. Both have style.’ ” + 

“What does that mean?” said Soames between close lips. + 

“Well,” murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white teeth, “an expression we use. In other words, it’s not likely to be a weekend business⁠—they’ll come together seriously or not at all.” + 

“H’m!” muttered Soames, “that’s all, is it?” + 

“Yes,” said Mr. Polteed, “but quite promising.” + 

“Spider!” thought Soames. “Good day!” + 

He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria Station and take the Underground into the City. For so late in January it was warm; sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the frosty grass⁠—an illumined cobweb of a day. + 

Little spiders⁠—and great spiders! And the greatest spinner of all, his own tenacity, forever wrapping its cocoon of threads round any clear way out. What was that fellow hanging round Irene for? Was it really as Polteed suggested? Or was Jolyon but taking compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it⁠—sentimental radical chap that he had always been? If it were, indeed, as Polteed hinted! Soames stood still. It could not be! The fellow was seven years older than himself, no better looking! No richer! What attraction had he? + 

“Besides, he’s come back,” he thought; “that doesn’t look⁠—I’ll go and see him!” and, taking out a card, he wrote: + 

“If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall be at the Connoisseurs any day between 5:30 and 6, or I could come to the Hotch Potch if you prefer it. I want to see you.⁠—S. F.” + 

He walked up St. James’s Street and confided it to the porter at the Hotch Potch. + 

“Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in,” he said, and took one of the new motor cabs into the City.⁠ ⁠… + 

Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face towards the Connoisseurs. What did Soames want now? Had he got wind of Paris? And stepping across St. James’s Street, he determined to make no secret of his visit. “But it won’t do,” he thought, “to let him know she’s there, unless he knows already.” In this complicated state of mind he was conducted to where Soames was drinking tea in a small bay-window. + 

“No tea, thanks,” said Jolyon, “but I’ll go on smoking if I may.” + 

The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were lighted; the two cousins sat waiting on each other. + 

“You’ve been in Paris, I hear,” said Soames at last. + 

“Yes; just back.” + 

“Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?” Jolyon nodded. + 

“You didn’t happen to see Irene, I suppose. It appears she’s abroad somewhere.” + 

Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: “Yes, I saw her.” + 

“How was she?” + 

“Very well.” + 

There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his chair. + 

“When I saw you last,” he said, “I was in two minds. We talked, and you expressed your opinion. I don’t wish to reopen that discussion. I only wanted to say this: My position with her is extremely difficult. I don’t want you to go using your influence against me. What happened is a very long time ago. I’m going to ask her to let bygones be bygones.” + 

“You have asked her, you know,” murmured Jolyon. + 

“The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock. But the more she thinks of it, the more she must see that it’s the only way out for both of us.” + 

“That’s not my impression of her state of mind,” said Jolyon with particular calm. “And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the matter if you think reason comes into it at all.” + 

He saw his cousin’s pale face grow paler⁠—he had used, without knowing it, Irene’s own words. + 

“Thanks,” muttered Soames, “but I see things perhaps more plainly than you think. I only want to be sure that you won’t try to influence her against me.” + 

“I don’t know what makes you think I have any influence,” said Jolyon; “but if I have I’m bound to use it in the direction of what I think is her happiness. I am what they call a ‘feminist,’ I believe.” + 

“Feminist!” repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time. “Does that mean that you’re against me?” + 

“Bluntly,” said Jolyon, “I’m against any woman living with any man whom she definitely dislikes. It appears to me rotten.” + 

“And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into her mind.” + 

“I am not likely to be seeing her.” + 

“Not going back to Paris?” + 

“Not so far as I know,” said Jolyon, conscious of the intent watchfulness in Soames’ face. + 

“Well, that’s all I had to say. Anyone who comes between man and wife, you know, incurs heavy responsibility.” + 

Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow. + 

“Goodbye,” he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved away, leaving Soames staring after him. “We Forsytes,” thought Jolyon, hailing a cab, “are very civilised. With simpler folk that might have come to a row. If it weren’t for my boy going to the war⁠—” The war! A gust of his old doubt swept over him. A precious war! Domination of peoples or of women! Attempts to master and possess those who did not want you! The negation of gentle decency! Possession, vested rights; and anyone “agin” ’em⁠—outcast! “Thank Heaven!” he thought, “I always felt ‘agin’ ’em, anyway!” Yes! Even before his first disastrous marriage he could remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial suits of women trying to be free of men they loathed. Parsons would have it that freedom of soul and body were quite different things! Pernicious doctrine! Body and soul could not thus be separated. Free will was the strength of any tie, and not its weakness. “I ought to have told Soames,” he thought, “that I think him comic. Ah! but he’s tragic, too!” Was there anything, indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own possessive instinct, who couldn’t see the sky for it, or even enter fully into what another person felt! “I must write and warn her,” he thought; “he’s going to have another try.” And all the way home to Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son which prevented him from posting back to Paris.⁠ ⁠… + 

But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing ache⁠—a jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of resistance to his way out. “Does that mean that you’re against me?” he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question. Feminist! Phrasey fellow! “I mustn’t rush things,” he thought. “I have some breathing space; he’s not going back to Paris, unless he was lying. I’ll let the spring come!” Though how the spring could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not tell. And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: “Nothing seems any good⁠—nothing seems worth while. I’m lonely⁠—that’s the trouble.” + 

He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark street below a church⁠—passing, turning her neck so that he caught the gleam of her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark hat, which had gold spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind. He opened his eyes⁠—so vividly he had seen her! A woman was passing below, but not she! Oh no, there was nothing there! + 

XIII + 

“Here We Are Again!” + 

Imogen’s frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of March. With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection. It took her mind off the slowly approaching rite which would give her a freedom but doubtfully desired; took her mind, too, off her boy and his fast approaching departure for a war from which the news remained disquieting. Like bees busy on summer flowers, or bright gadflies hovering and darting over spiky autumn blossoms, she and her “little daughter,” tall nearly as herself and with a bust measurement not far inferior, hovered in the shops of Regent Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond Street, lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics. Dozens of young women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before Winifred and Imogen, draped in “creations.” The models⁠—“Very new, modom; quite the latest thing⁠—” which those two reluctantly turned down, would have filled a museum; the models which they were obliged to have nearly emptied James’ bank. It was no good doing things by halves, Winifred felt, in view of the need for making this first and sole untarnished season a conspicuous success. Their patience in trying the patience of those impersonal creatures who swam about before them could alone have been displayed by such as were moved by faith. It was for Winifred a long prostration before her dear goddess Fashion, fervent as a Catholic might make before the Virgin; for Imogen an experience by no means too unpleasant⁠—she often looked so nice, and flattery was implicit everywhere: in a word it was “amusing.” + 

On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and Baker’s, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with cream, turned homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening touched with spring. Opening the door⁠—freshly painted a light olive-green; nothing neglected that year to give Imogen a good send-off⁠—Winifred passed towards the silver basket to see if anyone had called, and suddenly her nostrils twitched. What was that scent? + 

Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood absorbed. Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her breast, Winifred said: + 

“Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner.” + 

Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs. Winifred heard the door of her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath. Was it spring tickling her senses⁠—whipping up nostalgia for her “clown,” against all wisdom and outraged virtue? A male scent! A faint reek of cigars and lavender-water not smelt since that early autumn night six months ago, when she had called him “the limit.” Whence came it, or was it ghost of scent⁠—sheer emanation from memory? She looked round her. Nothing⁠—not a thing, no tiniest disturbance of her hall, nor of the dining-room. A little daydream of a scent⁠—illusory, saddening, silly! In the silver basket were new cards, two with “Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,” and one with “Mr. Polegate Thom” thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled severe. “I must be tired,” she thought, “I’ll go and lie down.” Upstairs the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it evening light; and she passed on up to her bedroom. This, too, was half-curtained and dim, for it was six o’clock. Winifred threw off her coat⁠—that scent again!⁠—then stood, as if shot, transfixed against the bed-rail. Something dark had risen from the sofa in the far corner. A word of horror⁠—in her family⁠—escaped her: “God!” + 

“It’s I⁠—Monty,” said a voice. + 

Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch of the light hanging above her dressing-table. He appeared just on the rim of the light’s circumference, emblazoned from the absence of his watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown, but⁠—yes!⁠—split at the toecap. His chest and face were shadowy. Surely he was thin⁠—or was it a trick of the light? He advanced, lighted now from toecap to the top of his dark head⁠—surely a little grizzled! His complexion had darkened, sallowed; his black moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines which she did not know about his face. There was no pin in his tie. His suit⁠—ah!⁠—she knew that⁠—but how unpressed, unglossy! She stared again at the toecap of his boot. Something big and relentless had been “at him,” had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him. And she stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the toe. + 

“Well!” he said, “I got the order. I’m back.” + 

Winifred’s bosom began to heave. The nostalgia for her husband which had rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper jealousy than any she had felt yet. There he was⁠—a dark, and as if harried, shadow of his sleek and brazen self! What force had done this to him⁠—squeezed him like an orange to its dry rind! That woman! + 

“I’m back,” he said again. “I’ve had a beastly time. By God! I came steerage. I’ve got nothing but what I stand up in, and that bag.” + 

“And who has the rest?” cried Winifred, suddenly alive. “How dared you come? You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order to come back. Don’t touch me!” + 

They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so many years of nights together. Many times, yes⁠—many times she had wanted him back. But now that he had come she was filled with this cold and deadly resentment. He put his hand up to his moustache; but did not frizz and twist it in the old familiar way, he just pulled it downwards. + 

“Gad!” he said: “If you knew the time I’ve had!” + 

“I’m glad I don’t!” + 

“Are the kids all right?” + 

Winifred nodded. “How did you get in?” + 

“With my key.” + 

“Then the maids don’t know. You can’t stay here, Monty.” + 

He uttered a little sardonic laugh. + 

“Where then?” + 

“Anywhere.” + 

“Well, look at me! That⁠—that damned.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“If you mention her,” cried Winifred, “I go straight out to Park Lane and I don’t come back.” + 

Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it moved her. He shut his eyes. It was as if he had said: “All right! I’m dead to the world!” + 

“You can have a room for the night,” she said; “your things are still here. Only Imogen is at home.” + 

He leaned back against the bed-rail. “Well, it’s in your hands,” and his own made a writhing movement. “I’ve been through it. You needn’t hit too hard⁠—it isn’t worth while. I’ve been frightened; I’ve been frightened, Freddie.” + 

That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver through Winifred. + 

“What am I to do with him?” she thought. “What in God’s name am I to do with him?” + 

“Got a cigarette?” + 

She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she couldn’t sleep at night, and lighted it. With that action the matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again. + 

“Go and have a hot bath. I’ll put some clothes out for you in the dressing-room. We can talk later.” + 

He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her⁠—they looked half-dead, or was it that the folds in the lids had become heavier? + 

“He’s not the same,” she thought. He would never be quite the same again! But what would he be? + 

“All right!” he said, and went towards the door. He even moved differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it is worth while to move at all. + 

When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room, then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky. Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment at the bathroom door, she went down and out. In the street she hesitated. Past seven o’clock! Would Soames be at his Club or at Park Lane? She turned towards the latter. Back! + 

Soames had always feared it⁠—she had sometimes hoped it.⁠ ⁠… Back! So like him⁠—clown that he was⁠—with this: “Here we are again!” to make fools of them all⁠—of the Law, of Soames, of herself! + 

Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging over her and the children! What a relief! Ah! but how to accept his return? That “woman” had ravaged him, taken from him passion such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not thought him capable of. There was the sting! That selfish, blatant “clown” of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another woman! Insulting! Too insulting! Not right, not decent to take him back! And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now! He was as much her husband as ever⁠—she had put herself out of court! And all he wanted, no doubt, was money⁠—to keep him in cigars and lavender-water! That scent! “After all, I’m not old,” she thought, “not old yet!” But that woman who had reduced him to those words: “I’ve been through it. I’ve been frightened⁠—frightened, Freddie!” She neared her father’s house, driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be held against a robbing world. And so she came to James’. + 

“Mr. Soames? In his room? I’ll go up; don’t say I’m here.” + 

Her brother was dressing. She found him before a mirror, tying a black bow with an air of despising its ends. + 

“Hullo!” he said, contemplating her in the glass; “what’s wrong?” + 

“Monty!” said Winifred stonily. + 

Soames spun round. “What!” + 

“Back!” + 

“Hoist,” muttered Soames, “with our own petard. Why the deuce didn’t you let me try cruelty? I always knew it was too much risk this way.” + 

“Oh! Don’t talk about that! What shall I do?” + 

Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound. + 

“Well?” said Winifred impatiently. + 

“What has he to say for himself?” + 

“Nothing. One of his boots is split across the toe.” + 

Soames stared at her. + 

“Ah!” he said, “of course! On his beam ends. So⁠—it begins again! This’ll about finish father.” + 

“Can’t we keep it from him?” + 

“Impossible. He has an uncanny flair for anything that’s worrying.” + 

And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces. “There ought to be some way in law,” he muttered, “to make him safe.” + 

“No,” cried Winifred, “I won’t be made a fool of again; I’d sooner put up with him.” + 

The two stared at each other. Their hearts were full of feeling, but they could give it no expression⁠—Forsytes that they were. + 

“Where did you leave him?” + 

“In the bath,” and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh. “The only thing he’s brought back is lavender-water.” + 

“Steady!” said Soames, “you’re thoroughly upset. I’ll go back with you.” + 

“What’s the use?” + 

“We ought to make terms with him.” + 

“Terms! It’ll always be the same. When he recovers⁠—cards and betting, drink and⁠—!” She was silent, remembering the look on her husband’s face. The burnt child⁠—the burnt child. Perhaps⁠—! + 

“Recovers?” replied Soames: “Is he ill?” + 

“No; burnt out; that’s all.” + 

Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his coat and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau de cologne, threaded his watch-chain, and said: “We haven’t any luck.” + 

And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as if in that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own. + 

“I’d like to see mother,” she said. + 

“She’ll be with father in their room. Come down quietly to the study. I’ll get her.” + 

Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable for a Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine collection of Law Reports unopened for many years. Here she stood, with her back to maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at the empty grate, till her mother came in followed by Soames. + 

“Oh! my poor dear!” said Emily: “How miserable you look in here! This is too bad of him, really!” + 

As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of all unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give her daughter a good hug. But there was comfort in her cushioned voice, and her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace. Summoning pride and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred said in her most offhand voice: + 

“It’s all right, Mother; no good fussing.” + 

“I don’t see,” said Emily, looking at Soames, “why Winifred shouldn’t tell him that she’ll prosecute him if he doesn’t keep off the premises. He took her pearls; and if he’s not brought them back, that’s quite enough.” + 

Winifred smiled. They would all plunge about with suggestions of this and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and that was⁠—nothing. The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort of victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground in her. No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home without the world knowing. + 

“Well,” said Emily, “come into the dining-room comfortably⁠—you must stay and have dinner with us. Leave it to me to tell your father.” And, as Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out the light. Not till then did they see the disaster in the corridor. + 

There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was standing with his dun-coloured camelhair shawl folded about him, so that his arms were not free and his silvered head looked cut off from his fashionably trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert. He stood, inimitably stork-like, with an expression as if he saw before him a frog too large to swallow. + 

“What’s all this?” he said. “Tell your father? You never tell me anything.” + 

The moment found Emily without reply. It was Winifred who went up to him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms, said: + 

“Monty’s not gone bankrupt, Father. He’s only come back.” + 

They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad she had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth of root in that shadowy old Forsyte. Something wry occurred about his shaven mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long silvery whiskers. Then he said with a sort of dignity: “He’ll be the death of me. I knew how it would be.” + 

“You mustn’t worry, Father,” said Winifred calmly. “I mean to make him behave.” + 

“Ah!” said James. “Here, take this thing off, I’m hot.” They unwound the shawl. He turned, and walked firmly to the dining-room. + 

“I don’t want any soup,” he said to Warmson, and sat down in his chair. They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while Warmson laid the fourth place. When he left the room, James said: “What’s he brought back?” + 

“Nothing, Father.” + 

James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon. “Divorce!” he muttered; “rubbish! What was I about? I ought to have paid him an allowance to stay out of England. Soames you go and propose it to him.” + 

It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was surprised when she said: “No, I’ll keep him now he’s back; he must just behave⁠—that’s all.” + 

They all looked at her. It had always been known that Winifred had pluck. + 

“Out there!” said James elliptically, “who knows what cutthroats! You look for his revolver! Don’t go to bed without. You ought to have Warmson to sleep in the house. I’ll see him myself tomorrow.” + 

They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably: “That’s right, James, we won’t have any nonsense.” + 

“Ah!” muttered James darkly, “I can’t tell.” + 

The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation. + 

When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father good night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress that she put all the comfort she could into her voice. + 

“It’s all right, Daddy, dear; don’t worry. I shan’t need anyone⁠—he’s quite bland. I shall only be upset if you worry. Good night, bless you!” + 

James repeated the words, “Bless you!” as if he did not quite know what they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door. + 

She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs. + 

Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed in a blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his head, and an extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth. + 

Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes after a blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood⁠—parched, yet rested by the sun’s retreat. It was as if a little dew had come already on her burnt-up husband. + 

He said apathetically: “I suppose you’ve been to Park Lane. How’s the old man?” + 

Winifred could not help the bitter answer: “Not dead.” + 

He winced, actually he winced. + 

“Understand, Monty,” she said, “I will not have him worried. If you aren’t going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go anywhere. Have you had dinner?” + 

“No.” + 

“Would you like some?” + 

He shrugged his shoulders. + 

“Imogen offered me some. I didn’t want any.” + 

Imogen! In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her. + 

“So you’ve seen her? What did she say?” + 

“She gave me a kiss.” + 

With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed. “Yes!” she thought, “he cares for her, not for me a bit.” + 

Dartie’s eyes were moving from side to side. + 

“Does she know about me?” he said. + 

It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed. He minded their knowing! + 

“No. Val knows. The others don’t; they only know you went away.” + 

She heard him sigh with relief. + 

“But they shall know,” she said firmly, “if you give me cause.” + 

“All right!” he muttered, “hit me! I’m down!” + 

Winifred went up to the bed. “Look here, Monty! I don’t want to hit you. I don’t want to hurt you. I shan’t allude to anything. I’m not going to worry. What’s the use?” She was silent a moment. “I can’t stand any more, though, and I won’t! You’d better know. You’ve made me suffer. But I used to be fond of you. For the sake of that.⁠ ⁠…” She met the heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with the downward stare of her green-grey eyes; touched his hand suddenly, turned her back, and went into her room. + 

She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings, thinking of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the bed in the other room; resolutely not “worrying,” but gnawed by jealousy of what he had been through, and now and again just visited by pity. + 

XIV + 

Outlandish Night + 

Soames doggedly let the spring come⁠—no easy task for one conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed reported nothing, except that his watch went on⁠—costing a lot of money. Val and his cousin were gone to the war, whence came news more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so far; James had retained his health; business prospered almost terribly⁠—there was nothing to worry Soames except that he was “held up,” could make no step in any direction. + 

He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them think that he had “piped off,” as James would have put it⁠—he might want to “pipe on” again at any minute. But he had to be so restrained and cautious that he would often pass the door of the Restaurant Bretagne without going in, and wander out of the purlieus of that region which always gave him the feeling of having been possessively irregular. + 

He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most amazing crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing, jostling, grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses and mouth-organs, penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage of idiocy, as it seemed to him. Mafeking! Of course, it had been relieved! Good! But was that an excuse? Who were these people, what were they, where had they come from into the West End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into. Girls cried: “Keep your hair on, stucco!” A youth so knocked off his top-hat that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered, exasperated, offended. This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse had unlocked floodgates, let flow waters of whose existence he had heard, perhaps, but believed in never. This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and Forsyteism. This was⁠—egad!⁠—Democracy! It stank, yelled, was hideous! In the East End, or even Soho, perhaps⁠—but here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What were the police about! In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could hardly believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing was unspeakable! These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny; such swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing⁠—and what laughter! + 

Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn’t be surprised if they began to break windows. In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter which people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing dervish of a crowd was swarming. From the Club windows his own kind were looking out on them with regulated amusement. They didn’t realise! Why, this was serious⁠—might come to anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in the late eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They were hysterical⁠—it wasn’t English! And all about the relief of a little town as big as⁠—Watford, six thousand miles away. Restraint, reserve! Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those indispensable attributes of property and culture, where were they? It wasn’t English! No, it wasn’t English! So Soames brooded, threading his way on. It was as if he had suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant “for quiet possession” out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking and stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before. Their want of stolidity, their want of reverence! It was like discovering that nine-tenths of the people of England were foreigners. And if that were so⁠—then, anything might happen! + 

At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt from racing, holding a false nose in his hand. + 

“Hallo, Soames!” he said, “have a nose!” + 

Soames responded with a pale smile. + 

“Got this from one of these sportsmen,” went on George, who had evidently been dining; “had to lay him out⁠—for trying to bash my hat. I say, one of these days we shall have to fight these chaps, they’re getting so damned cheeky⁠—all radicals and socialists. They want our goods. You tell Uncle James that, it’ll make him sleep.” + 

“In vino veritas,” thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy. And looking up at the houses he thought: “After all, we’re the backbone of the country. They won’t upset us easily. Possession’s nine points of the law.” + 

But, as he closed the door of his father’s house behind him, all that queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his mind almost as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had awakened in the warm clean morning comfort of his spring-mattressed bed. + 

Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood still. + 

A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn it! One had a right! + 