One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a stage
of his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth, and after
writing off liberally for depreciation by the war, found his value to
be some hundred and thirty thousand pounds. At his father's death, which
could not, alas, be delayed much longer, he must come into at least
another fifty thousand, and his yearly expenditure at present just
reached two. Standing among his pictures, he saw before him a future
full of bargains earned by the trained faculty of knowing better than
other people. Selling what was about to decline, keeping what was still
going up, and exercising judicious insight into future taste, he would
make a unique collection, which at his death would pass to the nation
under the title 'Forsyte Bequest.'
If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with Madame
Lamotte. She had, he knew, but one real ambition--to live on her
'renter' in Paris near her grandchildren. He would buy the goodwill
of the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price. Madame would live like a
Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested as she would know how.
(Incidentally Soames meant to put a capable manager in her place, and
make the restaurant pay good interest on his money. There were great
possibilities in Soho.) On Annette he would promise to settle fifteen
thousand pounds (whether designedly or not), precisely the sum old
Jolyon had settled on 'that woman.'
A letter from Jolyon's solicitor to his own had disclosed the fact that
'those two' were in Italy. And an opportunity had been duly given for
noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in London. The matter was
clear as daylight, and would be disposed of in half an hour or so; but
during that half-hour he, Soames, would go down to hell; and after that
half-hour all bearers of the Forsyte name would feel the bloom was off
the rose. He had no illusions like Shakespeare that roses by any other
name would smell as sweet. The name was a possession, a concrete,
unstained piece of property, the value of which would be reduced some
twenty per cent. at least. Unless it were Roger, who had once refused to
stand for Parliament, and--oh, irony!--Jolyon, hung on the line,
there had never been a distinguished Forsyte. But that very lack of
distinction was the name's greatest asset. It was a private name,
intensely individual, and his own property; it had never been exploited
for good or evil by intrusive report. He and each member of his family
owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference from
the public than had been necessitated by their births, their marriages,
their deaths. And during these weeks of waiting and preparing to drop
the Law, he conceived for that Law a bitter distaste, so deeply did he
resent its coming violation of his name, forced on him by the need he
felt to perpetuate that name in a lawful manner. The monstrous injustice
of the whole thing excited in him a perpetual suppressed fury. He had
asked no better than to live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go
into the witness box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim
his failure to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the
contempt of his kind. It was all upside down. She and that fellow ought
to be the sufferers, and they--were in Italy! In these weeks the Law he
had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of all
property, seemed to him quite pitiful. What could be more insane than
to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him when someone
unlawfully took her away from him? Did the Law not know that a man's
name was to him the apple of his eye, that it was far harder to be
regarded as cuckold than as seducer? He actually envied Jolyon the
reputation of succeeding where he, Soames, had failed. The question of
damages worried him, too. He wanted to make that fellow suffer, but he
remembered his cousin's words, "I shall be very happy," with the uneasy
feeling that to claim damages would make not Jolyon but himself suffer;
he felt uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them--the chap
was so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The
claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour
drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and
topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer
and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!" And he gave
instructions that his Counsel should state that the money would be given
to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time hitting off exactly the
right charity; but, having pitched on it, he used to wake up in
the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid; it'll draw attention.
Something quieter--better taste.' He did not care for dogs, or he would
have named them; and it was in desperation at last--for his knowledge of
charities was limited--that he decided on the blind. That could not be
inappropriate, and it would make the Jury assess the damages high.