One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a stage

of his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth, and after

writing off liberally for depreciation by the war, found his value to

be some hundred and thirty thousand pounds. At his father's death, which

could not, alas, be delayed much longer, he must come into at least

another fifty thousand, and his yearly expenditure at present just

reached two. Standing among his pictures, he saw before him a future

full of bargains earned by the trained faculty of knowing better than

other people. Selling what was about to decline, keeping what was still

going up, and exercising judicious insight into future taste, he would

make a unique collection, which at his death would pass to the nation

under the title 'Forsyte Bequest.'

If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with Madame

Lamotte. She had, he knew, but one real ambition--to live on her

'renter' in Paris near her grandchildren. He would buy the goodwill

of the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price. Madame would live like a

Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested as she would know how.

(Incidentally Soames meant to put a capable manager in her place, and

make the restaurant pay good interest on his money. There were great

possibilities in Soho.) On Annette he would promise to settle fifteen

thousand pounds (whether designedly or not), precisely the sum old

Jolyon had settled on 'that woman.'

A letter from Jolyon's solicitor to his own had disclosed the fact that

'those two' were in Italy. And an opportunity had been duly given for

noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in London. The matter was

clear as daylight, and would be disposed of in half an hour or so; but

during that half-hour he, Soames, would go down to hell; and after that

half-hour all bearers of the Forsyte name would feel the bloom was off

the rose. He had no illusions like Shakespeare that roses by any other

name would smell as sweet. The name was a possession, a concrete,

unstained piece of property, the value of which would be reduced some

twenty per cent. at least. Unless it were Roger, who had once refused to

stand for Parliament, and--oh, irony!--Jolyon, hung on the line,

there had never been a distinguished Forsyte. But that very lack of

distinction was the name's greatest asset. It was a private name,

intensely individual, and his own property; it had never been exploited

for good or evil by intrusive report. He and each member of his family

owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference from

the public than had been necessitated by their births, their marriages,

their deaths. And during these weeks of waiting and preparing to drop

the Law, he conceived for that Law a bitter distaste, so deeply did he

resent its coming violation of his name, forced on him by the need he

felt to perpetuate that name in a lawful manner. The monstrous injustice

of the whole thing excited in him a perpetual suppressed fury. He had

asked no better than to live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go

into the witness box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim

his failure to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the

contempt of his kind. It was all upside down. She and that fellow ought

to be the sufferers, and they--were in Italy! In these weeks the Law he

had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of all

property, seemed to him quite pitiful. What could be more insane than

to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him when someone

unlawfully took her away from him? Did the Law not know that a man's

name was to him the apple of his eye, that it was far harder to be

regarded as cuckold than as seducer? He actually envied Jolyon the

reputation of succeeding where he, Soames, had failed. The question of

damages worried him, too. He wanted to make that fellow suffer, but he

remembered his cousin's words, "I shall be very happy," with the uneasy

feeling that to claim damages would make not Jolyon but himself suffer;

he felt uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them--the chap

was so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The

claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour

drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and

topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer

and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!" And he gave

instructions that his Counsel should state that the money would be given

to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time hitting off exactly the

right charity; but, having pitched on it, he used to wake up in

the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid; it'll draw attention.

Something quieter--better taste.' He did not care for dogs, or he would

have named them; and it was in desperation at last--for his knowledge of

charities was limited--that he decided on the blind. That could not be

inappropriate, and it would make the Jury assess the damages high.




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