Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first

elm-tree in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung

up after the last mowing! The wind had got into the sou' west, too--a

delicious air, sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his

chin and cheek. Somehow, to-day, he wanted company--wanted a pretty face

to look at. People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with

the un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought:

'One's never had enough. With a foot in the grave one'll want something,

I shouldn't be surprised!' Down here--away from the exigencies of

affairs--his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little

domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said,

'Open, sesame,' to him day and night. And sesame had opened--how much,

perhaps, he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had

begun to call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though

he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a

view, however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually

made him ache, he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright,

lengthening days, with Holly's hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in

front looking studiously for what he never found, he would stroll,

watching the roses open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight

brightening the oak leaves and saplings in the coppice, watching the

water-lily leaves unfold and glisten, and the silvery young corn of

the one wheat field; listening to the starlings and skylarks, and the

Alderney cows chewing the cud, flicking slow their tufted tails; and

every one of these fine days he ached a little from sheer love of it

all, feeling perhaps, deep down, that he had not very much longer

to enjoy it. The thought that some day--perhaps not ten years hence,

perhaps not five--all this world would be taken away from him, before he

had exhausted his powers of loving it, seemed to him in the nature of an

injustice brooding over his horizon. If anything came after this life,

it wouldn't be what he wanted; not Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and

pretty faces--too few, even now, of those about him! With the years

his dislike of humbug had increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the

'sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long

dropped off, leaving him reverent before three things alone--beauty,

upright conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these

now was beauty. He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could

still read The Times, but he was liable at any moment to put it down if

he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct, property--somehow, they were

tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never tired him, only gave him

an uneasy feeling that he could not get enough of them. Staring into the

stilly radiance of the early evening and at the little gold and white

flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was like

the music of 'Orfeo,' which he had recently heard at Covent Garden. A

beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its

way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical and of the Golden Age

about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old

days'--highest praise he could bestow. The yearning of Orpheus for the

beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in life love

and beauty did go--the yearning which sang and throbbed through the

golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of the world that

evening. And with the tip of his cork-soled, elastic-sided boot he

involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog Balthasar, causing the animal

to wake and attack his fleas; for though he was supposed to have none,

nothing could persuade him of the fact. When he had finished he rubbed

the place he had been scratching against his master's calf, and settled

down again with his chin over the instep of the disturbing boot. And

into old Jolyon's mind came a sudden recollection--a face he had seen

at that opera three weeks ago--Irene, the wife of his precious nephew

Soames, that man of property! Though he had not met her since the day

of the 'At Home' in his old house at Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his

granddaughter June's ill-starred engagement to young Bosinney, he had

remembered her at once, for he had always admired her--a very pretty

creature. After the death of young Bosinney, whose mistress she had so

reprehensibly become, he had heard that she had left Soames at once.

Goodness only knew what she had been doing since. That sight of her

face--a side view--in the row in front, had been literally the only

reminder these three years that she was still alive. No one ever spoke

of her. And yet Jo had told him something once--something which had

upset him completely. The boy had got it from George Forsyte,

he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he was run

over--something which explained the young fellow's distress--an act

of Soames towards his wife--a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too,

that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his

description had always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost'

he had called her. And next day June had gone there--bottled up her

feelings and gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her

mistress had slipped out in the night and vanished. A tragic business

altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to lay

hands on her again. And he was living at Brighton, and journeying up

and down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For when he once took a

dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old Jolyon never got over

it. He remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the

news of Irene's disappearance. It had been shocking to think of her a

prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered back, when Jo saw

her, wandered back for a moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after

seeing that news, 'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street. Her

face had struck him very much the other night--more beautiful than he

had remembered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it. A

young woman still--twenty-eight perhaps. Ah, well! Very likely she had

another lover by now. But at this subversive thought--for married women

should never love: once, even, had been too much--his instep rose, and

with it the dog Balthasar's head. The sagacious animal stood up and

looked into old Jolyon's face. 'Walk?' he seemed to say; and old Jolyon

answered: "Come on, old chap!"




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