The Forsyte Saga - Volume 2

"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?"