Chapter VIII: James in Waiting

Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his
face toward Park Lane. His father had been unwell lately. This
would have to be kept from him! Never till that moment had he
realised how much the dread of bringing James’ grey hairs down
with sorrow to the grave had counted with him; how intimately it
was bound up with his own shrinking from scandal. His affection
for his father, always deep, had increased of late years with the
knowledge that James looked on him as the real prop of his
decline. It seemed pitiful that one who had been so careful all
his life and done so much for the family name—so that it was
almost a byword for solid, wealthy respectability—should at his
last gasp have to see it in all the newspapers. This was like
lending a hand to Death, that final enemy of Forsytes. “I must
tell mother,” he thought, “and when it comes on, we must keep the
papers from him somehow. He sees hardly anyone.” Letting himself
in with his latchkey, he was beginning to ascend he stairs when
he became conscious of commotion on the second-floor landing. His
mother’s voice was saying:

“Now, James, you’ll catch cold. Why can’t you wait quietly?”

His father’s answering

“Wait? I’m always waiting. Why doesn’t he come in?”

“You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy
of yourself on the landing.”

“He’ll go up to bed, I shouldn’t wonder. I shan’t sleep.”

“Now come back to bed, James.”

“Um! I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell.”

“You shan’t have to wait till to-morrow morning; I’ll go down and
bring him up. Don’t fuss!”

“There you go—always so cock-a-hoop. He mayn’t come in at all.”

“Well, if he doesn’t come in you won’t catch him by standing out
here in your dressing-gown.”

Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father’s
tall figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over
the balustrade above. Light fell on his silvery hair and
whiskers, investing his head with a sort of halo.

“Here he is!” he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured,
and his mother’s comfortable answer from the bedroom door:

“That’s all right. Come in, and I’ll brush your hair.” James
extended a thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a
skeleton, and passed through the doorway of his bedroom.

“What is it?” thought Soames. “What has he got hold of now?”

His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the
mirror, while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes
through and through his hair. She would do this several times a
day, for it had on him something of the effect produced on a cat
by scratching between its ears.

“There you are!” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”

Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
examined the mark on it.

“Well,” he said, “you’re looking better.”

James shook his head.

“I want to say something. Your mother hasn’t heard.” He announced
Emily’s ignorance of what he hadn’t told her, as if it were a
grievance.

“Your father’s been in a great state all the evening. I’m sure I
don’t know what about.”

The faint “whisk-whisk” of the brushes continued the soothing of
her voice.

“No! you know nothing,” said James. “Soames can tell me.” And,
fixing his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain,
uncomfortable to watch, on his son, he muttered:

“I’m getting on, Soames. At my age I can’t tell. I might die any
time. There’ll be a lot of money. There’s Rachel and Cicely got
no children; and Val’s out there—that chap his father will get
hold of all he can. And somebody’ll pick up Imogen, I shouldn’t
wonder.”

Soames listened vaguely—he had heard all this before.
Whish-whish! went the brushes.

“If that’s all!” said Emily.

“All!” cried James; “it’s nothing. I’m coming to that.” And again
his eyes strained pitifully at Soames.

“It’s you, my boy,” he said suddenly; “you ought to get a
divorce.”

That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for
Soames’ composure. His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on
the buttonhook, and as if in apology James hurried on:

“I don’t know what’s become of her—they say she’s abroad. Your
Uncle Swithin used to admire her—he was a funny fellow.” (So he
always alluded to his dead twin—“The Stout and the Lean of it,”
they had been called.) “She wouldn’t be alone, I should say.” And
with that summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he
was silent, watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird’s.
Soames, too, was silent. Whish-whish went the brushes.

“Come, James! Soames knows best. It’s his business.”

“Ah!” said James, and the word came from deep down; “but there’s
all my money, and there’s his—who’s it to go to? And when he dies
the name goes out.”

Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
dressing-table coverlet.

“The name?” said Emily, “there are all the other Forsytes.”

“As if that helped me,” muttered James. “I shall be in my grave,
and there’ll be nobody, unless he marries again.”

“You’re quite right,” said Soames quietly; “I’m getting a
divorce.”

James’ eyes almost started from his head.

“What?” he cried. “There! nobody tells me anything.”

“Well,” said Emily, “who would have imagined you wanted it? My
dear boy, that _is_ a surprise, after all these years.”

“It’ll be a scandal,” muttered James, as if to himself; “but I
can’t help that. Don’t brush so hard. When’ll it come on?”

“Before the Long Vacation; it’s not defended.”

James’ lips moved in secret calculation. “I shan’t live to see my
grandson,” he muttered.

Emily ceased brushing. “Of course you will, James. Soames will be
as quick as he can.”

There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.

“Here! let’s have the eau-de-Cologne,” and, putting it to his
nose, he moved his forehead in the direction of his son. Soames
bent over and kissed that brow just where the hair began. A
relaxing quiver passed over James’ face, as though the wheels of
anxiety within were running down.

“I’ll get to bed,” he said; “I shan’t want to see the papers when
that comes. They’re a morbid lot; I can’t pay attention to them,
I’m too old.”

Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father
say:

“Here, I’m tired. I’ll say a prayer in bed.”

And his mother answering

“That’s right, James; it’ll be ever so much more comfy.”