The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

In the next house someone was playing over and over again: 'La Donna

mobile' on an untuned piano; and the little garden had fallen into

shade, the sun now only reached the wall at the end, whereon basked

a crouching cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily down on the dog

Balthasar. There was a drowsy hum of very distant traffic; the creepered

trellis round the garden shut out everything but sky, and house, and

pear-tree, with its top branches still gilded by the sun.

For some time they sat there, talking but little. Then old Jolyon rose

to go, and not a word was said about his coming again.

He walked away very sadly. What a poor miserable place; and he thought

of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence for a Forsyte,

with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that no one entered from

one week's end to another.

That woman, whose face he had rather liked, was too thin-skinned by

half; she gave Jo a bad time he knew! And those sweet children! Ah! what

a piece of awful folly!

He walked towards the Edgware Road, between rows of little houses, all

suggesting to him (erroneously no doubt, but the prejudices of a Forsyte

are sacred) shady histories of some sort or kind.

Society, forsooth, the chattering hags and jackanapes--had set

themselves up to pass judgment on his flesh and blood! A parcel of old

women! He stumped his umbrella on the ground, as though to drive it into

the heart of that unfortunate body, which had dared to ostracize his son

and his son's son, in whom he could have lived again!

He stumped his umbrella fiercely; yet he himself had followed Society's

behaviour for fifteen years--had only today been false to it!

He thought of June, and her dead mother, and the whole story, with all

his old bitterness. A wretched business!

He was a long time reaching Stanhope Gate, for, with native perversity,

being extremely tired, he walked the whole way.

After washing his hands in the lavatory downstairs, he went to the

dining-room to wait for dinner, the only room he used when June was

out--it was less lonely so. The evening paper had not yet come; he had

finished the Times, there was therefore nothing to do.

The room faced the backwater of traffic, and was very silent. He

disliked dogs, but a dog even would have been company. His gaze,

travelling round the walls, rested on a picture entitled: 'Group of

Dutch fishing boats at sunset'; the chef d'oeuvre of his collection. It

gave him no pleasure. He closed his eyes. He was lonely! He oughtn't

to complain, he knew, but he couldn't help it: He was a poor thing--had

always been a poor thing--no pluck! Such was his thought.