And how he had called in at Jobson’s, and seen a Boucher sold, which he had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall Mall.
He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school. It was a habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he continued to do it even now, talking for long spells at dinner, as though by the volubility of words he could conceal from himself the ache in his heart.
Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when she said good-night. He may have had some vague notion that some night she would let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a husband ought to kiss his wife. Even if she hated him, he at all events ought not to put himself in the wrong by neglecting this ancient rite.
And why did she hate him? Even now he could not altogether believe it. It was strange to be hated! – the emotion was too extreme; yet he hated Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling vagabond, that night-wanderer. For in his thoughts Soames always saw him lying in wait – wandering. Ah, but he must be in very low water! Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen him coming out of a third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the mouth!
During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation, which seemed to have no end – unless she should suddenly come to her senses – never once did the thought of separating from his wife seriously enter his head.…
And the Forsytes! What part did they play in this stage of Soames’s subterranean tragedy?
Truth to say, little or none, for they were at the sea.
From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing daily; laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the winter.
Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and culled and pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.
The end of September began to witness their several returns.
In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in their cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini. The following morning saw them back at their vocations.
On the next Sunday Timothy’s was thronged from lunch till dinner.
Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate, Mrs Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been away.
It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next evidence of interest.
It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs MacAnder, Winifred Dartie’s greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with young Augustus Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed Irene and Bosinney walking from the bracken towards the Sheen Gate.
Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden long on a hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a bicycle and talk to young Flippard will try the toughest constitution; or perhaps the sight of the cool bracken grove, whence ‘those two’ were coming down, excited her envy. The cool bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak boughs for roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn, and the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern, while the deer stole by. The bracken grove of irretrievable delights, of golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and earth! The bracken grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump fauns leaping around the silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph at summer dusk!
This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at June’s ‘at home’, was not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal. Her own marriage, poor thing, had not been successful, but having had the good sense and ability to force her husband into pronounced error, she herself had passed through the necessary divorce proceedings without incurring censure.
She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in one of those large buildings, where, in small sets of apartments, are gathered incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief recreation out of business hours is the discussion of each other’s affairs.
Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was bored, for Flippard was a wit. To see ‘those two’ in so unlikely a spot was quite a merciful ‘pick-me-up’.
At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.
This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing eye and shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering the ends of Providence.
With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost distressing power of taking care of herself. She had done more, perhaps, in her way than any woman about town to destroy the sense of chivalry which still clogs the wheel of civilization. So smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as ‘the little MacAnder!’
Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman’s Club, but was by no means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was always thinking of her rights. She took her rights unconsciously, they came natural to her, and she knew exactly how to make the most of them without exciting anything but admiration amongst that great class to whom she was affiliated, not precisely perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and the true, the secret gauge, a sense of property.