Part 3, Chapter 2 of The Man of Property. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to find out how you can volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. Coming by Andy Minter. The Foresight Saga. The Man of Property. By John Gallsworthy. Part 3, Chapter 2, Night in the Park. Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the very thing to make her guest more enthraigé than ever, it is difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken. It was not a subject which the Foresights could talk about even among themselves. To use the words Soames had invented to characterise to himself the situation, it was Subterranean. Yet within a week of Mrs. McCander's encounter in Richmond Park, to all of them, save Timothy from whom it was carefully kept, to James on his domestic beat from the poultry to Park Lane, to George the Wild One on his daily adventure from the bow window at the Havasnake to the billiard-room at the Red Pottle, was it known that those two had gone to extremes? George, it was he who invented many of those striking expressions still current in fashionable circles, voiced the sentiment more accurately than any one, and he said to his brother Eustice that the buccaneer was going it.  George was felt that he must be, and yet what could be done? He ought perhaps to take steps, but to take steps would be deplorable. Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken. In this impasse the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and nothing to each other, in fact to pass it over. I displayed towards Irene a dignified coldness. Some impression might be made upon her, but she was seldom now to be seen, and there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to show her coldness. Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom, James would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his son's misfortune caused him. I can't tell, he would say. It worries me out of my life. There'll be a scandal, and that'll do him no good. I shan't say anything to him. There might be nothing in it. What do you think? She's very artistic. They tell me. What?  Well, I don't know. I expect the worst. This is what comes of having no children. I knew it would be from the first. Emily never told me they didn't mean to have any children. Nobody tells me anything. On his knees, by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with worry, he would breathe into the counterpane. Glad in his night-shirt, his neck poked forward, his backgrounded, he resembled some long white bird. Our father, he repeated, turning over and over again the thought of this possible scandal. Like old Jolian, he too, at the bottom of his heart, set the blame of the tragedy down to family interference. What business had that lot? He began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch, including young Jolian and his daughter as that lot, to introduce a person like this Bersini into the family. He had heard George's subricade, The Buccaneer, but he could make nothing of that. The young man was an architect. He began to feel that his brother Jolian, to whom he had always looked up, and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what he had expected. Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more sad than angry. His great comfort was to go to Winifreds, and take the little darties in his carriage over to Kensington Gardens, and there, by the round pond, he could be often seen walking, with his eyes fixed anxiously on little Publius' darties sailing-boat, which he himself had freighted with the penny, as though convinced that it would never again come to sure. While little Publius, who James delighted to say was not a bit like his father, skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to bet another that it never would, having found that it always did. From James would make the bet, he always paid, sometimes as many as three or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed never to pull on little Publius, and always in paying, he said, now that's for your money-box, why, you're getting quite a rich man! The thought of his little grandson's growing wealth was a real pleasure to him. But little Publius knew a sweet shop, and a trick worth two of that. And they would walk home across the park, James's figure, with high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the robust child figures of Imogen and little Publius. But those gardens and that park were not sacred to James. Four sights and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered, day after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets. The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summerlike warmth of the nights. On Saturday, October the fifth, the sky that had been blue all day, deepened after sunset to the bloom of purple grapes. There was no moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped around the trees, whose thin branches, resembling plumes, stirred not in the still warm air. All London had poured into the park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs. Couple after couple, from every gate they streamed along the paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently, out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves, in the heart of the soft darkness. To fresh comers along the paths, these forerunners formed part of that passion at dusk, when so only a strange murmur, like the confused beating of hearts, came forth. But when that murmur reached each couple in the lamplight, their voices wavered and ceased. Their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking, searching, probing the blackness. Suddenly as though drawn by invisible hands, they too stepped over the railing, and silent as shadows were gone from the light. The stillness enclosed in the far inexorable roar of the town, was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of multitudes of struggling human-atoms. Or in spite of the disapproval of that great body of foresight's, the municipal council, to whom love had long been considered, next to the sewage-question, the gravest danger to the community, a process was going on that night in the park, and in a hundred other parks, without which the thousand factories, churches, shops, taxes, and drains, of which they were the custodians, were as arteries without blood, a man without a heart. The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion and of love hiding under the trees, away from the trustees of their remorseless enemy, the sense of property, were holding a stealthy revel, and soams returning from Bayswater, for he had been alone to dine at Timothy's, walking home along the water, with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood driven from his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses. He thought of writing to the Times the next morning, to draw the attention of the editor to the condition of our parks. He did not, however, for he had a horror of seeing his name in print. But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the half-seen forms in the dark acted on him like some morbid stimulant. He left the path along the water, and stole under the trees, along the deep shadow of little plantations, where the boughs of chestnut trees hung their great leaves low and there was a blacker refuge, shaping his course in circles, which had for their object a stealthy inspection of chairs side by side against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers who stir at his approach. Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the serpentine, where in full lamp-light, back against the silver water, sat a couple who never moved, the woman's face buried on the man's neck, a single form, like a carved emblem of passion, silent and unashamed. And stung by the sight, soams hurried on, deeper into the shadow of the trees. In this search who knows what he thought and what he sought, bread for hunger, light in darkness, who knows what he expected to find, impersonal knowledge of the human heart, the end of his private subterranean tragedy, for again who knew but that each dark couple, unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she. But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was seeking, the wife of Soames Foresight sitting in the park like a common wench. Such thoughts were inconceivable, and from tree to tree with his noiseless step he passed. Once he was sworn at, once the whisper, if only it could always be like this, sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he waited there, patient and dogged, for the two to move. But it was only a poor, thin slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse, who passed him, clinging to her lover's arm. A hundred other lovers, too, whispered that hope in the stillness of the trees. A hundred other lovers clung to each other. But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the path, and left that seeking for what he knew not what. CHAPTER II The Foresight Saga, The Man of Property by John Galsworthy Part III, Chapter III, Meeting at the Botanical Young Jolien, whose circumstances were not those of a foresight, found at times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for those country-johns and researches into nature without having prosecuted which no watercolor artist ever puts brushed to paper. He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his color-box into the botanical gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a monkey puzzler or in the leaf of some India rubber plant, he would spend long hours sketching. An art critic, who had recently been looking at his work, had delivered himself as follows. In a way, your drawings are very good, tone and color, and some of them certainly quite a feeling for nature. But you see, they're so scattered, you'll never get the public to look at them. Now if you'd taken a definite subject, such as London by Night or the Crystal Palace in the Spring, and made a regular series, the public would have known at once what they were looking at. I can't lay too much stress upon that. All the men who are making great names in art, like Crumb Stone or Bleeder, are making them by avoiding the unexpected, by specializing and putting their works all in the same pigeonhole, so that the public know Pat once where to go.  He wants them to be able to say it once, a capital foresight. It is all the more important for you to be careful to choose a subject that they can lay hold of on the spot, since there's no very marked originality in your style. Young Jolien, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried rose leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a bit of faded damask, listened with his dim smile. Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry expression on her thin face, he said, You see, dear, I do not, she answered in her staccato voice that still had a little foreign accent. Your style has originality. The critic looked at her, smiled deferentially, and said no more. Like everyone else, he knew their history. The wards bore good fruit with Young Jolien. They were contrary to all that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held good in his art, but some strange deep instinct moved him against his will to turn them to profit. He discovered, therefore, one morning that an idea had come to him for making a series of watercolor drawings of London, how the idea had arisen he could not tell, and it was not to the following year, when he had completed and sold them at a very fair price, that in one of his impersonal moods he found himself able to recollect the art critic and to discover in his own achievement another proof that he was a foresight. He decided to commence with the botanical gardens, where he had already made so many studies and chose the little artificial pond, sprinkled now with an autumn shower of red and yellow leaves, though the gardeners longed to sweep them off, they could not reach them with their brooms. The rest of the gardens they swept bare enough, removing every morning nature's rain of leaves, piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires rose the sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo's note for spring, the scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the fall. The gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and green and russet pattern on the grass. The gravel paths must lie unstained, ordered, methodical, without knowledge of the realities of life, nor of that slow and beautiful decay which flings crowns underfoot to star the earth for the fallen glories, whence as the cycle rolls will leap again wild spring. Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning from its twig. But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace and praised heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them, and so young Jolian found them. Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was disconcerted to find a bench about twenty paces from his stand occupied, for he had a proper horror of anyone seeing him at work. A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there with her eyes fixed on the ground. A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and taking shelter behind this, young Jolian prepared his easel. His preparations were leisurely. He caught, as every true artist should, at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of his work, and he found himself looking furtively at this unknown dame. Like his father before him he had an eye for a face. This face was charming. He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face with large dark eyes and soft lips.  Her figure was lightly poised against the back of the bench, her knees were crossed. The tip of a patent leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt. There was something indeed inexpressibly dainty about the person of this lady, but young Jolian's attention was chiefly riveted by the look on her face, which reminded him of his wife. It was as though its owner had come into contact with forces too strong for her. It troubled him, arousing vague feelings of attraction and chivalry. Who was she? And what doing there alone? Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed at once forward and shy, found in the regents' park, came by on their way to Launtonnes, and he noted with disapproval their furtive stares of admiration. A loitering gardener halted to do something unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass. He too wanted an excuse for peeping.  With all these men young Jolian felt the same vague irritation. She looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who passed would look at her like that. Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds out to men the offer of pleasure. It had none of the devil's beauty so highly prized among the first foresights of the land. Neither was it of that type, no less adorable, associated with the box of chocolate. It was not of the spiritually passionate or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to house decoration and modern poetry, nor did it seem to promise to the playwright material for the production of the interesting and neuroscentic figure who commits suicide in the last act. In shape and coloring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its sensuous purity, this woman's face reminded him of Tisha's heavenly love, a reproduction of which hung over the sideboard in his dining room, and her attraction seemed to be in this soft passivity and the feeling she gave that to pressure she must yield. For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees dropping here in their alief, and the thrushes strutting close on grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rhyme. Then her charming face grew eager, and glancing round with almost a lover's jealousy, young Jolian saw Basinni striding across the grass. Curiously, he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the long clasp of their hands. They sat down close together, linked for all their outward discretion. He heard the rapid murmur of their talk, what they said he could not catch. He had rode in the galley himself. He knew the long hours of waiting in the lean minutes of a half-public meeting, the tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover. It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that this was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and women about town, none of those sudden appetites that wake up ravening and are surfaded and asleep again in six weeks. This was the real thing. This was what had happened to himself. Out of this anything might come. Basinni was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable in her passivity, sat looking over the grass. Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who would never stir a step for herself, who had given him all herself and would die for him, but perhaps would never run away with him? It seemed to young Jolie and that he could hear her saying, but, darling, it would ruin you, for he himself had experienced to the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart that she is a drag on the man she loves. And he peeped at them no more, but their soft, rapid talk came to his ears with a stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying to remember the notes of spring, joy, tragedy, which, which, and gradually their talk ceased, long silence followed. And where does soams come in, young Jolie and thought? People think she is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband, little they know of women. She's eating after starvation, taking her revenge, and help and help her, for he'll take his. He heard the swish of silk, and spying around the laurel, saw them walking away, their hands stealthily joined. At the end of July, old Jolie and had taken his granddaughter to the mountains. And on that visit, the last they ever paid, June recovered to a great extent her health and spirits. In the hotels filled with British foresight, for old Jolie and could not bear a set of Germans, as he called all foreigners, she was looked upon with respect the only granddaughter of that fine-looking and evidently wealthy old Mr. Foresight. She did not mix freely with people. To mix freely with people was not June's habit. But she formed some friendships, and notably one in the Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption. Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot, in the institution of a campaign against death, much of her own trouble. Old Jolie and watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval, for this additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst lame ducks worried him. Would she never make a friendship or take an interest in something that would be of real benefit to her? Taking up with a parcel of foreigners, he called it, he often, however, brought home grapes or roses and presented them to ma'am Zell with an ingratiating twinkle. Towards the end of September, in spite of June's disapproval, Madame Iselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St. Luc, to which they had moved her. And June took her to feet so deeply to heart that Old Jolie and carried her away to Paris. Here, in contemplation of the Venus de Milo and the Madeleine, she shook off her depression and when, towards the middle of October, they returned to town. Her grandfather believed that he had affected a cure. No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope Gate than he perceived to his dismay a return of her old, absorbed and brooding manner.  And in the huge gilt mirror were reflected those Dresden China groups of young men in tight knee breeches at the feet of full bosom ladies nursing on their laps, pet lambs, which Old Jolie had bought when he was a bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate taste. He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any foresight of them all, had moved with the times. But he could never forget that he had bought these groups at Jobsons and given a lot of money for them. He often said to June with a sort of disillusion contempt, you don't care about them, they're not the Jim Crack things you and your friends like, but they cost me 70 pounds. He was not a man who allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for solid reasons that it was sound. One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go round to Timothy's. She persuaded herself that it was her duty to call there and cheer him with an account of all her travels. But in reality, she went because she knew of no other place where, by some random speech or roundabout question, she could glean news of Besenny. They received her most cordially. And how was her dear grandfather? He had not been to see them since May. Her uncle Timothy was very poorly. He had had a lot of trouble with the chimney sweep in his bedroom.  It had quite upset her uncle. June sat there a long time dreading, yet passionately hoping that they would speak of Besenny. But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small let fall no word. Neither did she question June about him. In desperation, the girl asked at last whether Somes and Irene were in town. She had not yet been to see anyone. It was Aunt Hester who replied, oh yes, they were in town. They had not been away at all. There was some little difficulty about the house, she believed. June had heard no doubt. She had better ask her Aunt Julie. June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair. Her hands clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts. In answer to the girl's look, she maintained a strange silence. And when she spoke, it was to ask June whether she had worn night socks up in those high hotels, where it must be so cold of a night. June answered that she had not. She hated the stuffy things and rose to leave. Mrs. Small's infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to her than anything that could have been said. Before half an hour was over, she had dragged the truth from Mrs. Baines at Lowndes Square that Somes was bringing an action against Bassini over the decoration of the house. Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming effect, as though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new hope for herself. She learned that the case was expected to come on in about a month, and there seemed little or no prospect of Bassini's success. And whatever he'll do, I can't think, said Mrs. Baines. It's very dreadful for him, you know. He's got no money. He's very hard up. And we can't help him, I'm sure. I'm told the moneylenders won't lend you if you have no security, and he has none, none at all. Her ombon point had increased of late. She was in the full swing of autumn organization. Her writing table literally strewn with the menus of charity functions. She looked meaningly at June with her round eyes of parrot gray. The sudden flush that rose on the girl's intent young face, she must have seen spring up before her a great hope. The sudden sweetness of her smile often came back to Lady Baines in after years. Baines was knighted when he built that public museum of art, which has given so much employment to officials, and so little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was designed. The memory of that change vivid and touching, like the breaking open of a flower the first sun after long winter, the memory too of all that came after often intruded itself unaccountably and opportunity on Lady Baines when her mind was set upon the most important things. This was the very afternoon of the day the young Jolien witnessed the meeting in the botanical gardens, and on this day too, old Jolien paid a visit to his solicitors, foresight, bestard, and foresight in the poultry. Somes was not in, he had gone down to Somerset House. Bestard was buried up to the Hilton papers in that inaccessible apartment where he was judiciously placed in order that he might do as much work as possible. But James was in the front office, biting a finger and lugubriously turning over the pleadings in foresight versus besinning. This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the nice point, enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss, for his good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the bench he would not pay much attention to it. But he was afraid that this besinning would go bankrupt and Somes would have to find the money after all and costs into the bargain. And behind this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad dream, and of which this action was but an outward, invisible sign. He raised his head as old Jolien came in and muttered, how are you Jolien? Haven't seen you for an age. You've been to Switzerland, they tell me. This young besinning, he's got himself into a mess. I knew how it would be. He held out the papers regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom. Old Jolien read them in silence and while he read them, James looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while. Old Jolien pitched them down at last and they fell with a thump against a mass of affidavits and rebunk them deceased, one of the many branches of that parent profitable tree, friar versus foresight. I don't know what Somes is about, he said, to make a fuss over a few hundred pounds. I thought he was a man of property. James long upper lip twitched angrily. He could not bear his son to be attacked in such a spot. It's not the money he began, but meeting his brother's glance, direct shrew, judicial, he stopped. There was a silence. I've come in for my will, said old Jolien at last tugging at his moustache. James curiosity was roused at once. Perhaps nothing in this life was more stimulating to him than a will. It was a supreme deal with property, the final inventory of a man's belongings, the last word on what he was worth. He sounded the bell. Bring in Mr. Jolien's will, he said to an anxious, dark-haired clerk. You going to make some alterations? And through his mind there flashed the thought, now am I worth as much as he? Old Jolien put the will in his breast pocket and James twisted his long legs regretfully. You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me, he said. I don't know where you get your information from, answered old Jolien sharply. When's this action coming on? Next month? I can't tell what you've got in your mind. You must manage your own affairs, but if you take my advice, you'll settle it out of court. Goodbye. With a cold handshake, he was gone. James, his fixed gray-blue eye corkscrewing around some secret, anxious image, began again to bite his finger. Old Jolien took his will to the offices of the new colliery company and sat down in the empty board room to read it through. He answered down by the stern hymnings, so tartly when the latter, seeing his chairman seated there, entered with the new superintendent's first report that the secretary withdrew with regretful dignity and sending for the transfer clerk blew him up till the poor youth knew not where to look. It was not by George as he, down by the stern, would have him know, for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him to come down to that office and think that he was God almighty. He, down by the stern, had been head of that office for more years than a boy like him could count. And if he thought that when he had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he did not know him, hymnings down by the stern, and so forth. On the other side of the green bay's door, old Jolian sat at the long mahogany and leatherboard table. His thick, loose, jointed tortoise shell eyeglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his gold pencil moving down the clauses of his will. It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a man's possessions and damage the majestic effect of that little paragraph in the morning papers according to foresight's who die with 100,000 pounds.  And as to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind, whether realty or personality or partaking of the nature of either, upon trust to pay the proceeds, rents, annual produce, dividends, or interest thereof and thereon, to my said granddaughter June foresight, or her assigns during her life to be for her sole use and benefit and without, et cetera. And from and after her death or decease upon trust to convey, assign, transfer, or makeover, the said last mentioned lands, hereditments, premises, trust, monies, stocks, funds, investments and securities, or such as she'll then stand for and represent the same unto such person or persons whether one or more for such intense purposes and uses and generally in such manner, way and form in all respects as the said June foresight, notwithstanding Coverture shall by her last will and testament or any writing or writings in the nature of a will testament or testamentary disposition to be by her dually made, signed and published direct a point or makeover given dispose of the same and in default, et cetera, provided always and so on in seven folios of brief and simple phraseology. The will had been drawn by James and his palmy days. He had foreseen almost every contingency. Old Jolian sat a long time reading this will. At last he took half a sheet of paper from the rack and made a prolonged pencil note. Then buttoning up the will, he caused a cap to be called and drove to the offices of Paramour and Herring and Lincoln's Inn Fields. Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the firm and Old Jolian was closeted with him for half an hour. He had kept the handsome and on coming out gave the driver the address three Wastaria Avenue. He felt a strange, slow satisfaction as though he had scored a victory over James and the man of property. They should not poke their noses into his affairs anymore. He had just canceled their trusteeships of his will. He would take the whole of his business out of their hands and put it into the hands of young Herring and he would move the business of his companies too. If that young sums were such a man of property he would never miss a thousand a year or so. And under his great white mustache, Old Jolian grimly smiled. He felt that what he was doing was in the nature of a tribute of justice, richly deserved. Slowly, surely, with a secret inner process that works the destruction of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his happiness, his will, his pride had corroded the comely edifice of his philosophy. Life had worn him down on one side till like that family of which he was the head he had lost balance. To him, born northwards towards his son's house, the thought of the new disposition of property, which he had just set in motion, appeared vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, leveled at that family and that society of which James and his son seemed to him the representatives. He had made a restitution to Young Jolian and restitution to Young Jolian satisfied his secret craving for revenge, revenge against time, sorrow, and interference against all that incalculable sum of disapproval that had been bestowed by the world for 15 years on his only son. It presented itself as the one possible way of asserting once more the domination of his will, a forcing James and Somes and the family and all those hidden masses of foresight, a great stream rolling against the single dam of his obscenity to recognize once and for all that he would be master. It was sweet to think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer man by far than that son of James, that man of property. And it was sweet to give to Joe, for he loved his son. Neither Young Jolian nor his wife were in. Young Jolian indeed was not back from the botanical, but the little maid told him that she expected the master at any moment. He's always at home to tea, sir, to play with the children. Old Jolian said he would wait and sat down patiently enough in the faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer chintzes were removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all their threadbare deficiencies. He longed to send for the children, to have them there beside him, their supple bodies against his knees, to hear Jolly's hello, Gran, and see his rush, and feel Holly's soft little hands sealing up against his cheek, but he would not. There was solemnity in what he had come to do, and until it was over, he would not play. Him used himself by thinking how, with two strokes of his pen, he was going to restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from everything in that little house. How he could fill these rooms or others in some larger mansion with triumphs of art from maple and bull prids. How he could send little Jolly to Harrow in Oxford. He no longer had faith in eating in Cambridge for his son had been there. How he could procure little Holly, the best musical instruction. The child had a remarkable aptitude. As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his heart, he rose and stood at the window, looking down into the little walled strip of garden where the pear tree, bear of leaves before its time, stood with gaunt branches in the slow-gathering mist of the autumn afternoon. The dog, Balthazar, his tail curled tightly over a piebald, furry back, was walking at the farther end, sniffing at the plants and in intervals placing his leg for support against the wall. And old Jolly and mused. What pleasure was there left but to give? It was pleasant to give when you could find one who would be thankful for what you gave, one of your own flesh and blood. There was no satisfaction to be had out of giving to those who did not belong to you, to those who had no claim on you. Such giving as that was a betrayal of the individualistic convictions and actions of his life, of all his enterprise, his labor, and his moderation, of the great and proud fact that like tens of thousands of foresight before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens of thousands in the future, he had always made his own and held his own in the world. And while he stood there looking down on the smut covered foliage of the laurels, the black stained grass plot, the progress of the dog, Balthazar, all the suffering of the 15 years during which he had been balked of legitimate enjoyment mingled its gall with the sweetness of the approaching moment. Young Jolly and came at last pleased with his work and fresh from long hours in the open air. On hearing that his father was in the drawing room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsight was at home and being informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of relief. Then putting his painting materials carefully in the little coat closet out of sight, he went in. With characteristic decision, old Jolly and came at once to the point. I've been altering my arrangements, Joe, he said. You can cut your coat a bit longer in the future. I'm settling a thousand a year on you at once. June will have 50,000 at my death and you the rest.  I shouldn't keep a dog if I were you. The dog, Balthazar, seated in the center of the lawn was examining his tail. Young Jolly and looked at the animal but saw him dimly for his eyes were misty. Yours won't come short of 100,000, my boy, said, old Jolly and I thought you'd better know. I haven't much longer to live at my age. I shan't allude to it again. How's your wife? And give her my love. Young Jolly and put his hand on his father's shoulder and has neither spoke the episode closed. Having seen his father into a handsome, young Jolly and came back to the drawing room and stood where old Jolly and had stood looking down on the little garden. He tried to realize all that this meant to him and foresight that he was, this is of property were opened out in his brain. The years of half rations through which he had passed had not sapped his natural instincts. In extremely practical form he thought of travel, of his wife's costume, the children's education, a pony for Jolly, a thousand things. But in the midst of all he thought to a vicinity in his mistress and the broken song of the thrush, joy, tragedy, which, which. The old past, the poignant suffering, passionate, wonderful past that no money could buy, that nothing could restore and all its burning sweetness had come back before him.  End of part three, chapter three, recording by Leanne Howlett. Part three, chapter four of The Man of Property. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. Recording by Andy Minter. The Foresight Saga. The Man of Property. By John Gallsworthy. Part three, chapter four, Voyage into the Inferno. The morning after a certain night, on which Soames at last asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone. He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November, wrapping the town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the square even were barely visible from the dining-room window. He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not swallow attacked him, had he been right to yield to his over-mastering hunger of the night before, and break down the resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who was his lawful and solemnly constituted help-mate. He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands of her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never heard and still seemed to hear, and he was still haunted by the intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt as he stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle before silently slinking away. And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at himself. Two nights before, at Winifred Darties, he had taken Mrs. McAnder into dinner.  Not daining to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her words. They had aroused in him a fierce jealousy which, with the peculiar perversion of this instinct, had turned to fierce a desire. Without the incentive of Mrs. McAnder's words, he might never have done what he had done, without their incentive, and the accident of finding his wife's door for once unlocked, which had enabled him to steal upon her a sleep. Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them again. One thought comforted him, no one would know. It was not the sort of thing that she would speak about. And indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which needed so imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought, started rolling once more with the reading of his letters, those nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant importance at the back of his mind. The incident was really not of great moment. Women made a fuss about it in books, but in the cool judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as he recollected often received praise in the divorce court, he had but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent her from abandoning her duty, possibly if she was still seeing Bessigny from... No, he did not regret it. Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken, the rest would be comparatively... Comparatively, he rose and walked to the window. His nerve had been shaken. The sound of smothered sobbing was in his ears again. He could not get rid of it. He put on his fur coat and went out into the fog. Having to go into the city, he took the Underground Railway from Sloan Square Station. In the corner of the first-class compartment, filled with city men, the smothered sobbing still haunted him. So he opened the times with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news. He read that a recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous day with a more than usually long list of offences. He read of three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as eleven rapes, a surprisingly high number. In addition to many less conspicuous crimes to be tried during the coming sessions, and from one piece of news, he went on to another, keeping the paper well before his face. And still, being separable from his reading, was the memory of Irene's tear-stained face and the sounds from her broken heart. The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messers' Grinn and Greening, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the new colliery company Limited, whose business he suspected, rather than new, was stagnating. This enterprise afterwards slowly declined and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate. And a long conference at Waterbuck QC's chambers, attended by Bolter, by Fisk, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck QC himself. The case of Forsight v. Bersigny was expected to be reached on the morrow, before Mr. Justice Bentham. Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common sense, rather than too great legal knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they could have to try the action. He was a strong judge. Waterbuck QC, in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude neglect of Bolter and Fisk, paid to Soames a good deal of attention, by instinct or the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling him to be a man of property. He held, with remarkable consistency, to the opinion he had already expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great extent on the evidence given at the trial. And in a few well-directed remarks, he advised Soames not to be too careful in giving that evidence.  And after he had spoken, he laughed firmly, closed his lips tight, and scratched his head, just below where he had pushed his wig back, for all the world, like the gentleman farmer for whom he loved to be taken, he was considered perhaps the leading man in breach of promise cases. Soames used the underground again in going home. The fog was worse than ever at Sloan Square Station. Through the still, thick blur, men groped in and out, women, very few, grasped their reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to their mouths, crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver, haloed by a vague glow of lamplight that seemed to drown in vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs loomed, dim-shaped ever and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like rabbits to their burrows. And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud of fog, took no notice of each other. In the great Warren, each rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven underground. One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station door. Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each foresight thought, poor devil, looks as if he were having bad time. Their kind hearts beat a stroke faster than that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the fog, but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time nor money to spare for any suffering but their own. Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an interest in that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat half hid a face reddened by the cold, all thin and haggard, over which a hand stole, now and again, to smooth away anxiety, knew the resolution that kept him waiting there. But the waiting lover, if lover he were, was used to policemen's scrutiny, or too absorbed in his anxiety, for he never flinched. A hardened case, accustomed to long trists, to anxiety and fog and cold, if only his mistress came at last. Foolish lover, fogs last until the spring, there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere, gnawing fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at home. Serve him right, he should arrange his affairs better. So any respectable foresight. Yet, if that sounder citizen could have listened at the waiting lover's heart, out there in the fog and cold, he would have said again, yes, poor devil, he's having a bad time. Soames got into his cab, and with the glass down crept along Sloan Street, and so along the Brompton Road and home. He reached his house at five, his wife was not in. She had gone out a quarter of an hour before. Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog, what was the meaning of that? He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to the soul, trying to read the evening paper. A book was no good. In daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his. From the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some comfort, suicide of an actress, grave in disposition of a statesman and that chronic sufferer, divorce of an army officer, fire in a colliery. He read them all. They helped him a little, prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural taste. It was nearly seven when he heard her come in. The incident of the night before had long lost its importance and the stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog. But now that Irene was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing came back to him, and he felt nervous at the thought of facing her. She was already on the stairs. Her grey fur coat hung to her knees. Its high collar almost hid her face. She wore a thick veil. She neither turned to look at him nor spoke. No ghost or stranger could have passed more silently. Bilson came to lay dinner and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not coming down. She was having the soup in her room. For once, Soames did not change. It was perhaps the first time in his life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs and not even noticing them. He brooded long over his wine. He sent Bilson to light a fire in his picture-room and presently went up there himself. Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh as though among these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks around the little room, he found at length his peace of mind. He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an undoubted turner, and carrying it to the easel turned its face to the light. There had been a movement in turners, but he had not been able to make up his mind to part with it. He stood for a long time. His pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding it up. A wistful expression came into his eyes. He found perhaps that it came to too little. He took it down from the easel to put it back against the wall, but in crossing the room stopped, for he seemed to hear sobbing. It was nothing, only the sort of thing that had been bothering him in the morning, and soon after putting the high guard before the blazing fire, he stole downstairs. Fresh for the morrow was his thought. It was long before he went to sleep. It is now to George foresight that the mind must turn for light on the events of that fogging-gulfed afternoon. The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the foresight had passed the day reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Prince's Gardens. Since a recent crisis in his financial affairs, he had been kept on parole by Roger and compelled to reside at home. Towards five o'clock he went out and took a train at South Kensington Station, for everyone to-day went underground. His intention was to dine across the evening playing billiards at the Red Pottle, that unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good-guilt restaurant. He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his more usual St. James' Park, that he might reach German Street by better lighted ways. On the platform his eyes, for in combination with a composed and fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, always on the lookout for Phillips to his sardonic humour, his eyes were attracted by a man who, leaping from a first-class compartment, staggered rather than walk towards the exit. So, oh, my bird, said George to himself, why, it's the buccaneer, and he put his big figure on the trail. Nothing afforded him greater amusement than a drunken man.  He was too late. A porter caught him by the coat. The train was already moving on. George's practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad in a grey fur coat at the carriage window. It was Mrs. Soames. And George felt that this was interesting. And now he followed Bessini more closely than ever. Up the stairs passed the ticket-collector into the street. In that progress, however, his feelings underwent a change, no longer merely curious and amused. He felt sorry for the poor fellow he was shadowing. The buccaneer was not drunk, but seemed to be acting under the stress of violent emotion. He was talking to himself, and all that George could catch were the words, oh, God! Nor did he appear to know what he was doing or where he was going, but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind, and from being merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt that he must see the poor chap through. He had taken the knock. Taken the knock! And he wondered what on earth Mrs. Soames had been saying. What on earth she had been telling him in the railway carriage? She had looked bad enough herself. It made George sorry to think of her travelling on with her trouble all alone. He followed close behind Bessini's elbow, the tall burly figure, saying nothing, dodging wearily, and shadowed him out into the fog. There was something here beyond the jest. He kept his head admirably in spite of some excitement, for in addition to compassion the instincts of the chase were aroused within him. Bessini walked right out into the thoroughfare, a vast muffled blackness where a man could not see six paces before him, and there, all around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction, and sudden shapes came rolling slow upon them, and now and then a light showed like a dim island in an infinite dark sea. And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bessini, and fast after him walked George. If the fellow meant to put his tuppany under a bus he would stop it if he could. Across the street and back the hunted creature strode, not groping as other men were groping in that gloom, but driven forward as though the faithful George behind wielded an out, and this chase after a haunted man began to have for George the strangest fascination. But it was now that the affair developed in a way whichever afterwards caused it to remain green in his mind. Wrought to a standstill in the fog he heard words which threw a sudden light on these proceedings. What Mrs. Soames had said to Bessini in the train was now no longer dark. George understood from those mutterings that Soames had exercised his rights over an estranged and unwilling wife in the greatest, the supreme, act of property. His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation. It impressed him. He guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion and horror in Bessini's heart. And he thought, yes, it's a bit thick. I don't wonder the poor fellow's half-cracked. He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions in Trafalgar Square. A monster sphinxed a stray like themselves in that gulf of darkness. Here rigid and silent sat Bessini, and George, in whose patience was a touch of strange brotherliness, took his stand behind. He was not lacking in a certain delicacy, a sense of form, that did not permit him to intrude upon this tragedy. And he waited, quiet as the lion above, his fur collar hitched above his ears, concealing the fleshy redness of his cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic, compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on the way to their clubs. Men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then, even in his compassion, George's quill-pish humour broke forth in the sudden longing to pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say, here you, Johnny's, can see a show like this, here's a poor devil, whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of her husband. Walk up, walk up, he's taken the knock, you see. In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover, and grinned as he thought of some respectable, newly married spectre, enabled by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within Bessini. He fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down, for in George was all that contempt of the married middle-class, peculiar to the wild and sportsman-like spirits in its ranks. But he began to be bored, waiting was not what he had bargained for. After all, he thought, the poor chap will get over it. It's not the first time such a thing has happened in this little city. But now his quarry again began muttering words of violent hate and anger, and following a sudden impulse George touched him on the shoulder. Bessini spun round. Who are you? What do you want? George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas-lamps, in the light of that every-day world of which he was so hardy a connoisseur. But in this fog where all was gloomy and unreal, where nothing had that matter-of-fact value associated by foresight with earth, he was a victim to strange qualms, and as he tried to stare back into the eyes of this maniac, he thought, if I see a Bobby, I'll hand him over. He's not fit to be at large. But waiting for no answer Bessini strode off into the fog, and George followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more than ever set on tracking him down. He can't go on like this, he thought. It's God's own miracle he's not been run over already. He brooded no more on policemen, the sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him. Into a denser gloom than ever Bessini held at a furious pace, but his pursuer perceived more method in his madness. He was clearly making his way westwards. He's really going for soams, thought George. The idea was attractive. It would be a sporting end to such a chase. He had always disliked his cousin. The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made him leap aside. He did not intend to be killed for the buccaneer or anyone. Yet with hereditary tenacity he stuck to the trail through vapour that blotted out everything but the shadow of the hunted man and the dim moon of the nearest lamp. Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town stroller, George knew himself to be in Piccadilly. Here he could find his way blindfold, and freed from the strain of geographical uncertainty his mind returned to Bessini's trouble. Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting as it were through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to him a memory of his youth. A memory poignant still that brought the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic into the reek and blackness of this London fog. The memory of a night when in the darkest shadows of a lawn he had overheard from a woman's lips that he was not her soul possessor. And for a moment George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again with hail in his heart and his face to the sweet smelling dewy grass in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon. A longing seized him to throw his arm round the buccaneer and say, come on, old boy, time cures all. Let's go and drink it off. But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out of blackness, and into blackness disappeared, and suddenly George perceived that he had lost Piccadilly. He ran forward and back, felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which lives in the wings of the fog. Perspirations started out on his brow. He stood quite still, listening with all his might. And then, as he confided to Darty the same evening in the course of a game of billiards at the Red Bottle, I lost him. Darty twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just put together a neat break of twenty-three, failing at Jenny. And who was she, he asked.  No, no, my fine fellow, he thought. I'm not going to tell you. For though he mixed with Darty a good deal, he thought of him a bit of a cad. Oh, some love-lady or other, he said, and chalked his cue. A love-lady, exclaimed Darty, he used a more figurative expression. I made sure it was our friend, so did you, said George, curtly. Then, dammy, you've made an error. He missed his shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject again. Till towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic phraseology, looked upon the drink when it was yellow, he drew aside the blind and gazed out into the street. The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the red bottle, and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight. I can't help thinking of that poor buccaneer, he said. He may be wandering out there now in that fog if he's not a corpse, he added, with strange dejection. Corpse, said Darty, in whom the recollection of his defeat at Richmond flared out. He's all right, ten to one, if he wasn't tight. George turned on him, looking really formidable with the sort of savage gloom on his big face. Dry up, he said. Don't I tell you he's taken the knock? End of Part 3, Chapter 4 Part 3, Chapter 5 of The Man of Property This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to find out how you can volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org Recording by Andy Minter The Foresight Saga The Man of Property by John Gallsworthy Part 3, Chapter 5, The Trial In the morning of his case, which was second on the list, Somes was again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just as well for he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to adopt towards her. He had been requested to be in court by half-bast ten to provide against the event of the first action a breach of promise collapsing, which however it did not, both sides showing a courage that afforded water-butt QC an opportunity for improving his already great reputation in this class of case. He was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of promise man. It was a battle of giants. The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval. The jury left the box for good, and Somes went out to get something to eat. He met James, standing at the little luncheon bar, like a pelican in the wilderness of the galleries, bent over a sandwich with a glass of sherry before him. The spacious emptiness of the great central hall, over which father and son brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then for a fleeting moment by barristers in Wigan gown hurriedly bolting across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man looking up in a frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their generation, seated in an embrasure arguing. The sound of their voices arose, together with the scent as of neglected wells, which, mingling with the odor of the galleries, combined to form the savour like nothing but the emanation of a refined cheese, so indissolubly connected with the administration of British justice. It was not long before James addressed his son. When's your case coming on? I suppose it'll be on directly. I shouldn't wonder if this bussinny'd say anything. I should think he'd have to. He'll go bankrupt if it goes against him. He took a large bite at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry.  A chill smile played round Somes' lips. He looked back at his father. Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive thus interchanged, might have been pardoned for not appreciating the real understanding between them. James finished his sherry at a draught. How much? he asked. On returning to the court, Somes took at once his rightful seat on the front bench beside his solicitor. He ascertained where his father was seated with the glance so side-long as to commit nobody. James, sitting back with his hands clasped though the handle of his umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind council whence he could get away at once when the case was over. He considered bussinny's conduct in every way outrageous, but he did not wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting would be awkward. Next the divorce court. This court was perhaps the favourite emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise and other commercial actions being frequently decided there. Quite a sprinkling of persons unconnected with the law occupied the back benches and the hat of a woman or two could be seen in the gallery. The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were gradually filled by barristers in wigs who sat down to make pencil-notes, chat and attend to their teeth, but his interest was soon diverted from these lesser lights of justice by the entrance of Waterbuck QC with the wings of his silk-gown rustling and his red capable face supported by two short brown whiskers. The famous QC looked, as James freely admitted, the very picture of a man who could heckle a witness. For all his experience it so happened that he had never seen Waterbuck QC before, and like many foresights in the lower branch of the profession he had an extreme admiration for a good cross-examiner. The long lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed somewhat after seeing him, especially as he now perceived that Somes alone was represented by silk. Waterbuck QC had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat with his junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared, a thin, rather hen-like man with a little stoop, clean shaven under his snowy wig. Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck rose and remained on his feet until the judge was seated. James rose, but slightly. He was already comfortable and had no opinion of Bentham, having sat next but one to him at dinner twice at the Bumly Toms. Bumly Tom was rather a poor thing, though he had been so successful. James himself had given him his first brief. He was excited, too, for he had found out that Bassini was not in court. Now, what does he mean by that, he kept on thinking. The case having been called on, Waterbuck QC pushing back his papers hitched his gown on his shoulder and with a semi-circular look around him, like a man who is going to bat, arose and addressed the court. The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his lordship would be asked was to interpret the correspondence which had taken place between his client and the defendant, an architect, with reference to the decoration of a house. He would, however, submit that this correspondence could only mean one very plain thing. After briefly reciting the history of the house at Robin Hill, which he described as a mansion, and the actual facts of expenditure, he went on as follows. My client, Mr. Somes Foresight, is a gentleman, a man of property, who would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim that might be made against him, but he has met with such treatment from his architect in the matter of this house, over which he has, as your lordship has heard, already spent some twelve, some twelve thousand pounds, some considerably in advance of the amount he had originally contemplated, that as a matter of principle, and this I cannot too strongly emphasise, as a matter of principle, and in the interest of others, he has felt himself compelled to bring this action. The point put forward in defence by the architect, I will suggest to your lordship, is not worthy of a moment's serious consideration. He then read the correspondence. His client, a man of recognised position, was prepared to go into the box, and to swear that he never did authorise, and that it was never in his mind to authorise the expenditure of any money beyond the extreme limit of twelve thousand and fifty pounds, which he had clearly fixed, and not further to waste the time of the court, he would at once call Mr. Foresight. Somes then went into the box. His whole appearance was striking in its composure. His face, just supercilious enough, pale and clean-shaven, with the little line between the eyes and compressed lips, his dress in unoscentacious order, one hand neatly gloved, the other bare. He answered the questions put to him in a somewhat low but distinct voice. His evidence under cross-examination savoured of taciturnity. Had he used the expression a free hand? No. Come, come! The expression he had used was a free hand in the terms of this correspondence. Would you tell the court that that was English? Yes. What do you say it means? What it says. Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms? Yes. You are not an Irishman? No. Are you a well-educated man? Yes. And yet you persist in that statement? Yes. Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned again and again around the nice point, James sat with his hand behind his ear, his eyes fixed upon his son. He was proud of him. He could not but feel that in similar circumstances he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his replies, but his instinct told him that this taciturnity was the very thing. He sighed with relief, however, when Psalms slowly turning and without any change of expression descended from the box. When it came to the turn of Bersini's counsel to address the judge, James redoubled his attention, and he searched the court again and again to see if Bersini were not somewhere concealed. Young Chancari began nervously. He was placed by Bersini's absence in an awkward position. He therefore did his best to turn that absence to account. He could not but fear, he said, that his client had met with an accident. He had fully expected him there to give evidence. They had sent round that morning both to Mr. Bersini's office and to his rooms. Though he knew they were one and the same, he thought it was as well not to say so. But it was not known where he was, and this he considered to be ominous, knowing how anxious Mr. Bersini had been to give his evidence. He had not, however, been instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in default of such instruction he conceived it his duty to go on. The plea, on which he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client had he not unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending, would have supported by his evidence, was that such an expression as a free hand could not be limited, fettered and rendered unmeaning by any verbiage which might follow it. He would go further and say that the correspondence showed that whatever he might have said in his evidence, Mr. Forsythe had in fact never contemplated repudiating liability on any of the work ordered or executed by his architect. The defendant had certainly never contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated by his letters, he would never have proceeded with the work, a work of extreme delicacy carried on with great care and efficiency to meet and satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich man, a man of property. He felt strongly on this point, and feeling strongly he used perhaps rather strong words when he said that this action was of a most unjustifiable, unexpected, indeed unprecedented character. If his lordship had had the opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to take to go over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and beauty of the decorations executed by his client, an artist in his most honourable profession, he felt convinced that not for one moment would his lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word than daring attempt to evade legitimate responsibility. Taking the text of Soames's letters, he lightly touched on Boilo versus the blasted cement company limited. It is doubtful, he said, what that authority has decided. In any case, I would submit that it is just as much in my favour as my friends. He then argued that nice point, closely. With all due deference, he submitted that Mr. Forsyte's expression nullified itself, his client not being a rich man, the matter was a serious one for him. He was a very talented architect, whose professional reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake. He concluded with a perhaps too personal appeal to the judge as a lover of the arts to show himself the protector of artists from what was occasionally, he said occasionally, the two iron hand of capital. What, he said, will be the position of the artistic professions if men of property like this Mr. Forsyte refuse and are allowed to refuse to carry out the obligations of the commissions which they have given. He would now call his client in case he should at the last moment have found himself able to be present. The name Philip Baines Bossini was called three times by the ushers and the sound of the calling echoed with strange melancholy throughout the court and galleries. The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had upon James a curious effect. It was like calling for your lost dog about the streets and the creepy feeling that it gave him of a man missing, grated on his sense of comfort and security, on his coziness, though he could not have said why, it made him feel uneasy. He looked now at the clock a quarter to three. It would all be over in a quarter of an hour, where could the young fellow be? It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he got over the turn he had received. Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more ordinary mortals, the learned judge lent forward. The electric light just turned on about his head fell on his face and mellowed it to an orange hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig. The amplitude of his robes grew before the eye, his whole figure facing the comparative dusk of the court, radiated like some majestic and sacred body. He cleared his throat, took a sip of water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk, and folding his bony hands before him began. To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought Bentham would loom. It was the majesty of the law, and a person endowed with the nature far less matter of fact than that of James might have been excused for failing to pierce this halo and disinter therefrom the somewhat ordinary foresight who walked and talked in everyday life under the name of Sir Walter Bentham. He delivered judgment in the following words. The facts in this case are not in dispute. On May the fifteenth last the defendant wrote to the plaintiff requesting to be allowed to withdraw from his professional position in regard to the decoration of the plaintiff's house unless he were given a free hand. The plaintiff on May the seventeenth wrote back as follows, In giving you, in accordance with your request of this free hand, I wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of the house as handed over to me, completely decorated, inclusive of your fee, as arranged between us, must not exceed twelve thousand pounds. To this letter the defendant replied on May the eighteenth, if you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to the exact pound I am afraid you are mistaken. On May the nineteenth the plaintiff wrote as follows, I did not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds there would be any difficulty between us. You have a free hand in the terms of this correspondence and I hope you will see your way to completing the decorations. On May the twentieth the defendant replied thus shortly, Very well. In completing these decorations the defendant incurred the liabilities and expenses which brought the total cost of this house up to the sum of twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all of which expenditure has been defrayed by the plaintiff. This action has been brought by the plaintiff to recover from the defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds expended by him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this correspondence as the maximum sum that the defendant had authority to expend. The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is liable to refund to the plaintiff this sum. In my judgment he is so liable. What in effect the plaintiff has said is this I give you a free hand to complete these decorations provided that you keep within a total cost to me of twelve thousand pounds if you exceed that sum by as much as fifty pounds I will not hold you responsible. Beyond that point you are no agent of mine and I shall repudiate liability. It is not clear to me whether had the plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his agent's contracts he would under all the circumstances have been successful in so doing but he has not adopted this course. He has accepted liability and fallen back upon his rights against the defendant under the terms of the latter's engagement. In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum from the defendant. It has been sought on behalf of the defendant to show that no limit of expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this correspondence. If this were so I can find no reason for the plaintiff's importation into the correspondence of the figures of twelve thousand pounds and subsequently of fifty pounds. The defendant's contention would render these figures meaningless. It is manifest to me that by his letter of May the twentieth he ascended to a very clear proposition by the terms of which he must be held to be bound. For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for the amount claimed with costs. James Side and Stooping picked up his umbrella which had fallen with a rattle at the words importation into this correspondence. Untangling his legs he rapidly left the court without waiting for his son. He snapped up a handsome cab. It was a clear gray afternoon and drove straight to Timothy's where he found Swithin. And to him, Mrs. Septimus Small and Aunt Hester he recounted the whole proceedings eating two muffins not altogether at the intervals of speech. Somes did very well, he ended. He's got his head screwed on in the right way. This won't please Julian. It's a bad business for that young Bosini. He'll go bankrupt, I shouldn't wonder. And then, after a long pause, during which he had stared disquietly into the fire, he added, he wasn't there. Now why? There was a sound of footsteps. The figure of a thick-set man with the ruddy, one face of robust health was seen in the back drawing-room. The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined against the black of his frock coat. He spoke in a grudging voice. Well, James, he said, I can't, I can't stop. And turning round he walked out. It was Timothy. James rose from his chair. There, he said, there, I knew there was something wrong. He checked himself in the England, staring before him as though he had seen a portent. End of Part 3, Chapter 5. Part 3, Chapter 6 of The Man of Property. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The foresight saga, The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy. Part 3, Chapter 6. Somes breaks the news. In leaving the court, Somes did not go straight home. He felt disinclined for the city and drawn by need for sympathy in his triumph. He, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to Timothy's and the Bayswater Road. His father had just left. Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in possession of the whole story, greeted him warmly. They were sure he was hungry after all that evidence. Smithers should toast him some more muffins. His dear father had eaten them all. He must put his legs up on the sofa, and he must have a glass of prune brandy, too. It was so strengthening. Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his want, for he felt in want of exercise. On hearing this suggestion, he pitched. A pretty pass young men were coming to. His father was out of order, and he could not bear the thought of anyone else drinking prune brandy. He went away almost immediately, saying to Somes, And how's your wife?  Staring down from his height on Somes, he contracted his thick, puffy, yellow hand, as though squeezing within it all this small fry, and throwing out his chest, he waddled slowly away. Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified. Swithin was so droll. They themselves were longing to ask Somes how Irene would take the result, yet knew that they must not. He would perhaps say something of his own accord to throw some light on this, the present burning question in their lives, the question that from necessity of silence tortured them almost beyond bearing, for even Timothy had now been told, and the effect on his health was little short of alarming. And what, too, would June do? This also was the most exciting, if dangerous, speculation. They had never forgotten old Jolian's visit, since when he had not once been to see them, they had never forgotten the feeling it gave all who were present, that the family was no longer what it had been, that the family was breaking up. But Somes gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed, talking of the Barbizon School of Painters, whom he had just discovered. To the coming men, he said, he should not wonder if a lot of money were made over them. He had his eye on two pictures by a man called Corot, charming things. If he could get them at a reasonable price, he was going to buy them. They would, he thought, fetch a big price someday. Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small nor Aunt Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off. It was interesting, most interesting, and then Somes was so clever that they were sure he would do something with those pictures if anybody could. But what was his plan now that he had won his case? Was he going to leave London at once and live in the country? Or what was he going to do? Somes answered that he did not know. He thought they should be moving soon. He rose and kissed his aunts. No sooner had Aunt Julie received this emblem of departure than a change came over her, as though she were being visited by dreadful courage. Every little roll of flesh on her face seemed trying to escape from an invisible confining mask. She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height and said, It has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody else will tell you, I have made up my mind that Aunt Hester interrupted her. Mind, Julia, you do it, she gasped on your own responsibility. Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard. I think you ought to know, dear, that Mrs. McCander saw Irene walking in Richmond Park with Mr. Bassini.  Really, Julie was too. She should not do such things when she, Aunt Hester, was in the room. And breathless with anticipation, she waited for what songs would answer. He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centered between his eyes, lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger, he bit a nail delicately. Then, drawing it out between set lips, he said, Mrs. McCander is a cat. Without waiting for any reply, he left the room. When he went into Timothy's, he had made up his mind what course to pursue on getting home. He would go up to Irene and say, Well, I've won my case, and there's an end of it. I don't want to be hard on Bassini. I'll see if we can't come to some arrangement. He shan't be pressed. And now let's turn over a new leaf. We'll let the house and get out of these fogs. We'll go down to Robin Hill at once. I never meant to be rough with you. Let's shake hands and perhaps she would let him kiss her and forget. When he came out of Timothy's, his intentions were no longer so simple. The smoldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed up within him. He would put an end to that sort of thing once and for all. He would not have her drag his name in the dirt. If she could not or would not love him, as was her duty and his right, she should not play him tricks with anyone else. He would tax her with it, threaten to divorce her. That would make her behave. She would never face that. But what if she did? He was staggered. This had not occurred to him. What if she did? What if she made him a confession? How would he stand then? He would have to bring a divorce. A divorce.  Its lack of compromise appalled him.  This jettisoning of his property with his own hands seemed uncanny to Somes. It would injure him in his profession. He would have to get rid of the house at Robin Hill on which he had spent so much money, so much anticipation, and had a sacrifice. And she, she would no longer belong to him, not even in name.  He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting beyond the thought that he should never see her again. But perhaps there was nothing to confess. Even now, very likely, there was nothing to confess. Was it wise to push things so far? Was it wise to put himself into a position where he might have to eat his words? The result of this case would ruin Bessini. A roined man was desperate, but what could he do? He might go abroad. Roined men always went abroad. What could they do if indeed it was they without money? It would be better to wait and see how things turned out. If necessary, he could have her watched. The agony of his jealousy for all the world like the crisis of an aching tooth came on again, and he almost cried out. But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he got home. When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided nothing. He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to meet her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or do. The maid, Billson, was in the hall, and in answer to his question, Where is your mistress? Told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the house without noon, taking with her a trunk and a bag. Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he confronted her. What, he exclaimed, what's that you said? Suddenly recollecting that he must not betray emotion, he added, what message did she leave? And notice with secret terror the startled look of the maid's eyes. Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir. No message. Very well, thank you, that will do. I shall be dining out. The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly turning over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood on the carved oak rug chest in the hall. Mr. Mrs. Barum Culture, Mrs. Septimus Small, Mrs. Baines, Mr. Solomon Thornworthy, Lady Bellis, Ms. Hermione Bellis, Ms. Winifred Bellis, Ms. Ella Bellis. Who the devil were all these people? He seemed to have forgotten all familiar things. The words, no message, a trunk and a bag, played a hide and seek in his brain. It was incredible that she had left no message, and still in his fur coat he ran upstairs two steps at a time as a young married man when he comes home will run up to his wife's room. Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet smelling, everything in perfect order. On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt was the bag she had made and embroidered with her own hands to hold her sleeping things. Her slippers ready at the foot, the sheets even turned over at the head while expecting her. On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from her dressing bag, his own present. There must then be some mistake. What bag had she taken? He went to the bell to summon Billson, but remembered in time that he must assume knowledge of where Irene had gone, take it all as a matter of course and grope out the meaning for himself. He locked the doors and tried to think, but felt his brain going round and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes. Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the mirror. He was too pale, a grayish tinge all over his face. He poured out water and began feverishly washing. Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion she used for her hair and at this scent the burning sickness of his jealousy seized him again. Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the street. He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went down Sloan Street, he framed a story for use in case he should not find her at Besenny's. But if he should, his power of decision again failed. He reached the house without knowing what he should do if he did find her there. It was after office hours and the street door was closed. The woman who opened it could not say whether Mr. Besenny were in or no. She had not seen him that day, not for two or three days. He might attend to him now. Nobody attended to him. He—Somes interrupted her. He would go up and see for himself.  The top floor was unlighted. The door closed. No one answered his ringing. He could hear no sound. He was obliged to descend, shivering under his fur, a chill at his heart. Hailing a cab, he told the man to drive to Park Lane. On the way he tried to recollect the mass given her a check. She could not have more than three or four pounds, but there were her jewels, and with exquisite torture he remembered how much money she could raise on these, enough to take them abroad, enough for them to live on for months. He tried to calculate. The cab stopped and he got out with the calculation unmade. The butler asked whether Mrs. Somes was in the cab. The master had told him they were both expected to dinner. Somes answered, he was cold. The butler was sorry. Somes thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and remembering that he was not in dress clothes asked, anybody here to dinner, Warmson? Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Darty, sir. Again, it seemed to Somes that the butler was looking curiously at him. His composure gave way. What are you looking at? He said, what's the matter with me, eh?  Somes walked upstairs, passing the drawing room without a look. He went straight up to his mother's and father's bedroom.  Somes stopped. He felt half choked, whether because he had come upstairs too fast or for some other reason. He, he himself, had never, never been asked to. He heard his father's voice as though there was a pen in his mouth saying, who's that? Who's there? What do you want? His mother's. Here, Felice, come and hook this. He put his hand up to his throat and said hoarsely. It's I, Somes. He noticed, gratefully, the affectionate surprise in Emily's well, my dear boy, and James as he dropped the hook. What, Somes? What's brought you up? Aren't you well? He answered mechanically, I'm all right, and looked at them and it seemed impossible to bring out his news. James, quick to take alarm began. You don't look well. I expect you've taken a chill.  Have you brought Irene? Somes shook his head. No, he stammered. She, she's left me. Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing. Her tall, full figure lost its majesty and became very human as she came running over to Somes. My dear boy, my dear boy. She put her lips to his forehead and stroked his hand. His face looked older. Left you, he said. What do you mean, left you? You never told me she was going to leave you. Somes answered surly. How could I tell? What's to be done? James began walking up and down. He looked strange and stork-like without a coat. What's to be done, he muttered. How should I know what's to be done? What's the good of asking me? Nobody tells me anything and then they come and ask me what's to be done to tell them.  There she stands. She doesn't say anything. What I should say you've got to do is to follow her. Somes smiled. His peculiar, supercilious smile had never before looked pitiable. I don't know where she's gone, he said. Don't know where she's gone, said James. How do you mean, don't know where she's gone? Where do you suppose she's gone? She's gone after that young vicinity. That's where she's gone. I knew how it would be. Somes, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother pressing his hand. And all that passed seemed to pass as though his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.  There'll be a scandal. I always said so. Then no one's saying anything.  And Emily's voice, calm, rather contemptuous. Come now, James. Somes will do all that he can. And James, staring at the floor a little brokenly. Well, I can't help you. I'm getting old. Don't you be in too great a hurry, my boy. And his mother's voice again. Somes will do all he can to get her back. We won't talk of it. It'll all come right, I dare say. And James. Well, I can't see how it can come right. And if she hasn't gone off with that young Bessini, my advice to you is not to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back. Once more, Somes felt his mother stroking his hand in token of her approval. And as though repeating some form of sacred oath, he muttered between his teeth, I will. All three went down to the drawing room together. There were gathered the three girls in Darty. Had Irene been present, the family circle would have been complete. James sank into his arm chair and except for a word of cold greeting to Darty, whom he both despised and dreaded. As a man likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner was announced. Somes, too, was silent. Emily alone, a woman of cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial subjects. She was never more composed in her manner in conversation than that evening. A decision having been come to, not to speak of Irene's flight, no view was expressed by any other member of the family. As to the right course to be pursued. There can be little doubt from the general tone adopted in relation to events as they afterwards turned out that James's advice, don't you listen to her, follow her and get her back, would, with here and there an exception, have been regarded as sound, not only in Park Lane, but amongst the Nicklaces, the Rogers and at Timothy's. Just as it would surely have been endorsed by that wider body of foresight who were merely excluded from judgment by ignorance of the story. In spite then of Emily's efforts the dinner was served by Warmson in the footmen almost in silence. Darty was sulky and drank all he could get. The girls seldom talked to each other at any time. James asked once where June was and what she was doing with herself these days. No one could tell him. He sank back into gloom.  Ah, he said, that's a clever little chap. I don't know what will become of him if he goes on like this.  But it was only a flash. The courses succeeded one another solemnly under the electric light which glared down to the table but barely reached the principal ornament of the walls, a so-called sea piece by Turner almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men. Champagne was handed to James prehistoric port but as by the chill hand of some skeleton. At ten o'clock Soames left. Twice in reply to questions he had said that Irene was not well. He felt he could no longer trust himself.  He walked away in the cold wind which whistled desolately around the corners of the streets under a sky of clear steel blue stars. He noticed neither their frosty greeting nor the crackle of the curled-up plain leaves nor the night women hurrying in their shabby furs nor the pinched faces of vagabonds at street corners. Winter was come but Soames hastened home oblivious. His hands trembled as he took the late letters from the guilt wire cage into which they had been thrust through the slit in the door. None from Irene. He went into the dining room. The fire was bright there. Slippers ready, spirit case and carbon cigarette box on the table. But after staring at it all for a minute or two, he turned out the light and went upstairs.  It was into this room that Soames went. He made a great illumination with candles and for a long time continued pacing up and down between the bed and the door. He could not get used to the thought that she had really left him searching for some message, some reason, some reading of all the mystery of his married life. He began opening every recess and drawer. There were her dresses. He had always liked indeed insisted that she should be well-dressed. She had taken very few. Two or three at most. And drawer after drawer full of linen and silk things was untouched. Perhaps after all it was only a freak and she had gone to the seaside for a few days change. If only that were so he would be coming back. He would never again do as he had done that fatal night before last. Never again run that risk. Though it was her duty, her duty as a wife though she did belong to him he would never again run that risk. She was evidently not quite right in her head. He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels. It was not locked and came open as he pulled. The jewel box had the key in it. This surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to be empty. It was far from empty. Divided in little green velvet compartments were all the things he had given her even her watch and stuck into the recess that contained the watch was a three-cornered note addressed Somes foresight and Irene's handwriting. I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given me. And that was all. He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls at the little flat gold watch that was set in sapphires at the chains and rings each in its nest and the tears rushed up in his eyes and dropped upon them. Nothing that she could have done nothing that she had done brought home to him like this the inner significance of her act. For the moment perhaps he understood nearly all there was to understand understood that she loathed him that she had loathed him for years that for all intents and purposes they were like people living in different worlds that there was no hope for him that he had been even that she had suffered that she was to be pitied. In that moment of emotion he betrayed the foresight in him forgot himself, his interests, his property was capable of almost anything was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and unpractical such moments passed quickly and as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness he got up, locked the box and slowly almost trembling and it with him into the other room. End of Part 3 Chapter 6 Recording by Leanne Howlett