The Forsyte Saga - Volume 3

"Will you say--Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter."

If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him. 'By

George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came. 'It's a topsy-turvy

affair!'

The maid came back. "Would the gentleman state his business, please?"

"Say it concerns Mr. Jon," said Soames.

And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white

marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a bad lot--had

loved two men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came face

to face with her once more. And suddenly he saw her in the opening chink

between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in hesitation;

the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed gravity, the

old calm defensive voice: "Will you come in, please?"

He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the

confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this was the

first time--the very first--since he married her seven-and-thirty years

ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call her

his. She was not wearing black--one of that fellow's radical notions, he

supposed.

"I apologise for coming," he said glumly; "but this business must be

settled one way or the other."

"Won't you sit down?"

"No, thank you."

Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them,

mastered him, and words came tumbling out:

"It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it. I

consider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of indulging

her; that's why I'm here. I suppose you're fond of your son."

"Devotedly."

"Well?"

"It rests with him."

He had a sense of being met and baffled. Always--always she had baffled

him, even in those old first married days.

"It's a mad notion," he said.

"It is."

"If you had only--! Well--they might have been--" he did not finish that

sentence "brother and sister and all this saved," but he saw her shudder

as if he had, and stung by the sight he crossed over to the window. Out

there the trees had not grown--they couldn't, they were old!

"So far as I'm concerned," he said, "you may make your mind easy. I

desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about.

Young people in these days are--are unaccountable. But I can't bear to

see my daughter unhappy. What am I to say to her when I go back?"

"Please say to her as I said to you, that it rests with Jon."

"You don't oppose it?"