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!"