Hes fond of her, I know, thought James. Look at the way hes always giving her things.
And the extraordinary unreasonableness of her disaffection struck him with increased force.
It was a pity, too, she was a taking little thing, and he, James, would be really quite fond of her if shed only let him. She had taken up lately with June; that was doing her no good, that was certainly doing her no good. She was getting to have opinions of her own. He didnt know what she wanted with anything of the sort. Shed a good home, and everything she could wish for. He felt that her friends ought to be chosen for her. To go on like this was dangerous.
June, indeed, with her habit of championing the unfortunate, had dragged from Irene a confession, and, in return, had preached the necessity of facing the evil, by separation, if need be. But in the face of these exhortations, Irene had kept a brooding silence, as though she found terrible the thought of this struggle carried through in cold blood. He would never give her up, she had said to June.
Who cares? June cried; let him do what he likes youve only to stick to it! And she had not scrupled to say something of this sort at Timothys; James, when he heard of it, had felt a natural indignation and horror.
What if Irene were to take it into her head to he could hardly frame the thought to leave Soames? But he felt this thought so unbearable that he at once put it away; the shady visions it conjured up, the sound of family tongues buzzing in his ears, the horror of the conspicuous happening so close to him, to one of his own children! Luckily, she had no money a beggarly fifty pound a year! And he thought of the deceased Heron, who had had nothing to leave her, with contempt. Brooding over his glass, his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to rise when the ladies left the room. He would have to speak to Soames would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like this, now that such a contingency had occurred to him. And he noticed with sour disfavour that June had left her wine-glasses full of wine.
That little things at the bottom of it all, he mused; Irened never have thought of it herself. James was a man of imagination.
The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.
I gave four hundred pounds for it, he was saying. Of course its a regular work of art.
Four hundred! Hm! thats a lot of money! chimed in Nicholas.
The object alluded to was an elaborate group of statuary in Italian marble, which, placed upon a lofty stand (also of marble), diffused an atmosphere of culture throughout the room. The subsidiary figures, of which there were six, female, nude, and of highly ornate workmanship, were all pointing towards the central figure, also nude, and female, who was pointing at herself; and all this gave the observer a very pleasant sense of her extreme value. Aunt Juley, nearly opposite, had had the greatest difficulty in not looking at it all the evening.
Old Jolyon spoke; it was he who had started the discussion.
Four hundred fiddlesticks! Dont tell me you gave four hundred for that?
Between the points of his collar Swithins chin made the second painful oscillatory movement of the evening.
Four-hundred-pounds, of English money; not a farthing less. I dont regret it. Its not common English its genuine modern Italian!
Soames raised the corner of his lip in a smile, and looked across at Bosinney. The architect was grinning behind the fumes of his cigarette. Now, indeed, he looked more like a buccaneer.
Theres a lot of work about it, remarked James hastily, who was really moved by the size of the group. Itd sell well at Jobsons.
The poor foreign dey-vil that made it, went on Swithin, asked me five hundred I gave him four. Its worth eight. Looked half-starved, poor dey-vil!
Ah! chimed in Nicholas suddenly, poor, seedy-lookin chaps, these artists; its a wonder to me how they live. Now, theres young Flageoletti, that Fanny and the girls are always havin in, to play the fiddle; if he makes a hundred a year its as much as ever he does!
James shook his head. Ah! he said, I dont know how they live!
Old Jolyon had risen, and, cigar in mouth, went to inspect the group at close quarters.
Wouldnt have given two for it! he pronounced at last.
Soames saw his father and Nicholas glance at each other anxiously; and, on the other side of Swithin, Bosinney, still shrouded in smoke.
I wonder what he thinks of it? thought Soames, who knew well enough that this group was hopelessly vieux jeu[12]; hopelessly of the last generation. There was no longer any sale at Jobsons for such works of art.
Swithins answer came at last. You never knew anything about a statue. Youve got your pictures, and thats all!
Old Jolyon walked back to his seat, puffing his cigar. It was not likely that he was going to be drawn into an argument with an obstinate beggar like Swithin, pig-headed as a mule, who had never known a statue from a straw hat.
Stucco! was all he said.
It had long been physically impossible for Swithin to start; his fist came down on the table.
Stucco! I should like to see anything youve got in your house half as good!
And behind his speech seemed to sound again that rumbling violence of primitive generations.
It was James who saved the situation.
Now, what do you say, Mr. Bosinney? Youre an architect; you ought to know all about statues and things!
Every eye was turned upon Bosinney; all waited with a strange, suspicious look for his answer.
And Soames, speaking for the first time, asked:
Yes, Bosinney, what do you say?
Bosinney replied coolly:
The work is a remarkable one.
His words were addressed to Swithin, his eyes smiled slyly at old Jolyon; only Soames remained unsatisfied.
Remarkable for what?
For its naivete
The answer was followed by an impressive silence; Swithin alone was not sure whether a compliment was intended.
Chapter IV
Projection of the House
Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three days after the dinner at Swithins, and looking back from across the Square, confirmed his impression that the house wanted painting.
He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her hands crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out. This was not unusual. It happened, in fact, every day.
He could not understand what she found wrong with him. It was not as if he drank! Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear; was he violent; were his friends rackety; did he stay out at night? On the contrary.
The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a mystery to him, and a source of the most terrible irritation. That she had made a mistake, and did not love him, had tried to love him and could not love him, was obviously no reason.
The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a mystery to him, and a source of the most terrible irritation. That she had made a mistake, and did not love him, had tried to love him and could not love him, was obviously no reason.
He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wifes not getting on with him was certainly no Forsyte.
Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to his wife. He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring affection. They could not go anywhere without his seeing how all the men were attracted by her; their looks, manners, voices, betrayed it; her behaviour under this attention had been beyond reproach. That she was one of those women not too common in the Anglo-Saxon race born to be loved and to love, who when not loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him. Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as well as receive; and she gave him nothing! Then why did she marry me? was his continual thought. He had forgotten his courtship; that year and a half when he had besieged and lain in wait for her, devising schemes for her entertainment, giving her presents, proposing to her periodically, and keeping her other admirers away with his perpetual presence. He had forgotten the day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of her dislike to her home surroundings, he crowned his labours with success. If he remembered anything, it was the dainty capriciousness with which the gold-haired, dark-eyed girl had treated him. He certainly did not remember the look on her face strange, passive, appealing when suddenly one day she had yielded, and said that she would marry him.
It had been one of those real devoted wooings which books and people praise, when the lover is at length rewarded for hammering the iron till it is malleable, and all must be happy ever after as the wedding bells.
Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady side.
The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the country, and build.
For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem. There was no use in rushing into things! He was very comfortably off, with an increasing income getting on for three thousand a year; but his invested capital was not perhaps so large as his father believed James had a tendency to expect that his children should be better off than they were. I can manage eight thousand easily enough, he thought, without calling in either Robertsons or Nicholls.
He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an amateur of pictures, and had a little-room in No. 62, Montpellier Square, full of canvases, stacked against the wall, which he had no room to hang. He brought them home with him on his way back from the City, generally after dark, and would enter this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend hours turning the pictures to the light, examining the marks on their backs, and occasionally making notes.
They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a sign of some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses, its interminable streets, where his life and the lives of his breed and class were passed. Every now and then he would take one or two pictures away with him in a cab, and stop at Jobsons on his way into the City.