But at dinner there were plans to be made. To-night she would go back to
the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London. He must instruct
his solicitor--Jack Herring. Not a finger must be raised to hinder the
process of the Law. Damages exemplary, judicial strictures, costs, what
they liked--let it go through at the first moment, so that her neck
might be out of chancery at last! To-morrow he would see Herring--they
would go and see him together. And then--abroad, leaving no doubt, no
difficulty about evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth.
He looked round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more
than a woman was sitting there. The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli, had
known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women--this
flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair, her lips,
and in her eyes.
'And this is to be mine!' he thought. 'It frightens me!'
After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee. They sat
there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer night
come very slowly on. It was still warm and the air smelled of lime
blossom--early this summer. Two bats were flighting with the faint
mysterious little noise they make. He had placed the chairs in front
of the study window, and moths flew past to visit the discreet light in
there. There was no wind, and not a whisper in the old oak-tree twenty
yards away! The moon rose from behind the copse, nearly full; and the
two lights struggled, till moonlight conquered, changing the colour and
quality of all the garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their
feet, climbing up, changing their faces.
"Well," said Jolyon at last, "you'll be tired, dear; we'd better start.
The maid will show you Holly's room," and he rang the study bell. The
maid who came handed him a telegram. Watching her take Irene away, he
thought: 'This must have come an hour or more ago, and she didn't bring
it out to us! That shows! Well, we'll be hung for a sheep soon!' And,
opening the telegram, he read:
"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on June
20th. Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.
He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless. The moon shone in on him;
a moth flew in his face. The first day of all that he had not thought
almost ceaselessly of Jolly. He went blindly towards the window, struck
against the old armchair--his father's--and sank down on to the arm of
it. He sat there huddled' forward, staring into the night. Gone out like
a candle flame; far from home, from love, all by himself, in the dark!
His boy! From a little chap always so good to him--so friendly! Twenty
years old, and cut down like grass--to have no life at all! 'I didn't
really know him,' he thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved each
other. It's only love that matters.'