Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast "Let's go
up to Lord's!"
"Wanted"--something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived
during the sixty hours since Jon had brought Fleur down. "Wanted"--too,
that which might assuage the pangs of memory in one who knew he might
lose them any day!
Fifty-eight years ago Jolyon had become an Eton boy, for old Jolyon's
whim had been that he should be canonised at the greatest possible
expense. Year after year he had gone to Lord's from Stanhope Gate with
a father whose youth in the eighteen-twenties had been passed without
polish in the game of cricket. Old Jolyon would speak quite openly of
swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young Jolyon with
the guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should be
overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been nervous,
for his father--in Crimean whiskers then--had ever impressed him as
the beau ideal. Though never canonised himself, Old Jolyon's natural
fastidiousness and balance had saved him from the errors of the vulgar.
How delicious, after howling in a top hat and a sweltering heat, to go
home with his father in a hansom cab, bathe, dress, and forth to the
"Disunion" Club, to dine off white bait, cutlets, and a tart, and
go--two "swells," old and young, in lavender kid gloves--to the opera
or play. And on Sunday, when the match was over, and his top hat duly
broken, down with his father in a special hansom to the "Crown and
Sceptre," and the terrace above the river--the golden sixties when the
world was simple, dandies glamorous, Democracy not born, and the books
of Whyte Melville coming thick and fast.
A generation later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow-buttonholed with
corn-flowers--by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been canonised at
a trifle less expense--again Jolyon had experienced the heat and
counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and the
strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after dinner, his boy
making the most heart-breaking flukes and trying to seem languid
and grown-up. Those two days each year he and his son had been alone
together in the world, one on each side--and Democracy just born!
And so, he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of
light-blue ribbon from Irene, and gingerly, keeping cool, by car and
train and taxi, had reached Lord's Ground. There, beside her in a
lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched the game,
and felt the old thrill stir within him.
When Soames passed, the day was spoiled. Irene's face was distorted by
compression of the lips. No good to go on sitting here with Soames or
perhaps his daughter recurring in front of them, like decimals. And he
said: