"Have you had a nice nap, James?"
Nap! He was in torment, and she asked him that!
"What's this about Dartie?" he said, and his eyes glared at her.
Emily's self-possession never deserted her.
"What have you been hearing?" she asked blandly.
"What's this about Dartie?" repeated James. "He's gone bankrupt."
"Fiddle!"
James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his stork-like
figure.
"You never tell me anything," he said; "he's gone bankrupt."
The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that mattered at
the moment.
"He has not," she answered firmly. "He's gone to Buenos Aires."
If she had said "He's gone to Mars" she could not have dealt James
a more stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in British
securities, could as little grasp one place as the other.
"What's he gone there for?" he said. "He's got no money. What did he
take?"
Agitated within by Winifred's news, and goaded by the constant
reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:
"He took Winifred's pearls and a dancer."
"What!" said James, and sat down.
His sudden collapse alarmed her, and smoothing his forehead, she said:
"Now, don't fuss, James!"
A dusky red had spread over James' cheeks and forehead.
"I paid for them," he said tremblingly; "he's a thief! I--I knew how it
would be. He'll be the death of me; he ...." Words failed him and he sat
quite still. Emily, who thought she knew him so well, was alarmed, and
went towards the sideboard where she kept some sal volatile. She could
not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit working in that thin, tremulous
shape against the extravagance of the emotion called up by this outrage
on Forsyte principles--the Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying: 'You
mustn't get into a fantod, it'll never do. You won't digest your lunch.
You'll have a fit!' All unseen by her, it was doing better work in James
than sal volatile.
"Drink this," she said.
James waved it aside.
"What was Winifred about," he said, "to let him take her pearls?" Emily
perceived the crisis past.
"She can have mine," she said comfortably. "I never wear them. She'd
better get a divorce."
"There you go!" said James. "Divorce! We've never had a divorce in the
family. Where's Soames?"
"He'll be in directly."
"No, he won't," said James, almost fiercely; "he's at the funeral. You
think I know nothing."
"Well," said Emily with calm, "you shouldn't get into such fusses when
we tell you things." And plumping up his cushions, and putting the sal
volatile beside him, she left the room.
But James sat there seeing visions--of Winifred in the Divorce Court,
and the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on Roger's
coffin; of Val taking after his father; of the pearls he had paid for
and would never see again; of money back at four per cent., and the
country going to the dogs; and, as the afternoon wore into evening,
and tea-time passed, and dinnertime, those visions became more and more
mixed and menacing--of being told nothing, till he had nothing left of
all his wealth, and they told him nothing of it. Where was Soames? Why
didn't he come in?... His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it
to drink, and saw his son standing there looking at him. A little sigh
of relief escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he said: