What'll you do with yourself? You'd better come and dine with us!"
Old Jolyon refused. He went down to the front door and saw them into their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already forgotten his spleen--Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and majestic with auburn hair; on her left, Irene--the two husbands, father and son, sitting forward, as though they expected something, opposite their wives. Bobbing and bounding upon the spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of their chariot, old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.
During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.
"Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?"
Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw Irene steal at him one of her unfathomable looks. It is likely enough that each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as they drove away from old Jolyon's 'At Home!'
Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth brothers, Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing their steps alongside Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station of the Underground. Like all other Forsytes of a certain age they kept carriages of their own, and never took cabs if by any means they could avoid it.
The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of mid-June foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena, which contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade and conversation.
"Yes," said Roger, "she's a good-lookin' woman, that wife of Soames's. I'm told they don't get on."
This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any of the Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage of the houses by the way, and now and then he would level his, umbrella and take a 'lunar,' as he expressed it, of the varying heights.
"She'd no money," replied Nicholas.
He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being then the golden age before the Married Women's Property Act, he had mercifully been enabled to make a successful use.
"What was her father?"
"Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me."
Roger shook his head.
"There's no money in that," he said.
"They say her mother's father was cement."
Roger's face brightened.
"But he went bankrupt," went on Nicholas.
"Ah!" exclaimed Roger, "Soames will have trouble with her; you mark my words, he'll have trouble--she's got a foreign look."
Nicholas licked his lips.
"She's a pretty woman," and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.
"How did he get hold of her?" asked Roger presently. "She must cost him a pretty penny in dress!"
"Ann tells me," replied Nicholas," he was half-cracked about her.
She refused him five times. James, he's nervous about it, I can see."
"Ah!" said Roger again; "I'm sorry for James; he had trouble with Dartie." His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung his umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever.
Nicholas's face also wore a pleasant look.
"Too pale for me," he said, "but her figures capital!"
Roger made no reply.
"I call her distinguished-looking," he said at last--it was the highest praise in the Forsyte vocabulary. "That young Bosinney will never do any good for himself. They say at Burkitt's he's one of these artistic chaps--got an idea of improving English architecture; there's no money in that! I should like to hear what Timothy would say to it."
They entered the station.
"What class are you going? I go second."
"No second for me," said Nicholas;--"you never know what you may catch."
He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second to South Kensington. The train coming in a minute later, the two brothers parted and entered their respective compartments. Each felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his thoughts:
'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'
And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:
'Cantankerous chap Roger--always was!'
There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes. In that great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they to be sentimental?