On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do what
required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything he had yet
undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one other action.
He chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene was more likely to
be in, but mainly because he had failed to find sufficient resolution by
daylight, had needed wine to give him extra daring.
He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old Church,
uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived. He found it
hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read the name, 'Mrs.
Irene Heron'--Heron, forsooth! Her maiden name: so she used that again,
did she?--he stepped back into the road to look up at the windows of the
first floor. Light was coming through in the corner fiat, and he
could hear a piano being played. He had never had a love of music, had
secretly borne it a grudge in the old days when so often she had turned
to her piano, making of it a refuge place into which she knew he could
not enter. Repulse! The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at
last open! Bitter memory came with that sound. It must be she playing,
and thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more undecided than
ever. Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his tongue felt dry, his
heart beat fast. 'I have no cause to be afraid,' he thought. And then
the lawyer stirred within him. Was he doing a foolish thing? Ought he
not to have arranged a formal meeting in the presence of her trustee?
No! Not before that fellow Jolyon, who sympathised with her! Never! He
crossed back into the doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of
his heart, mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell. When
the door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by the scent
which came--that perfume--from away back in the past, bringing muffled
remembrance: fragrance of a drawing-room he used to enter, of a house he
used to own--perfume of dried rose-leaves and honey!
"Say, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "your mistress will see me, I know." He had
thought this out; she would think it was Jolyon!
When the maid was gone and he was alone in the tiny hall, where
the light was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls, carpet,
everything was silvery, making the walled-in space all ghostly, he could
only think ridiculously: 'Shall I go in with my overcoat on, or take it
off?' The music ceased; the maid said from the doorway: