She moved the organ on, and three doors off began again.
It was the waltz they had played at Roger's when Irene had danced with Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came back to Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been drifted to him then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her eyes so soft, drawing Bosinney on and on down an endless ballroom.
The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding her tune all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding it perhaps to Bosinney himself.
Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked back to the window.
The tune had mesmerized him, and there came into his view Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards down the Square, in a soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping sleeves, that he did not know.
She stopped before the organ, took out her purse, and gave the woman money.
Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.
She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood looking at herself in the glass.
Her cheeks were flushed as if the sun had burned them; her lips were parted in a smile.
She stretched her arms out as though to embrace herself, with a laugh that for all the world was like a sob.
Soames stepped forward.
"Very-pretty!" he said.
But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up the stairs.
He barred the way.
"Why such a hurry?" he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of hair fallen loose across her ear....
He hardly recognised her.
She seemed on fire, so deep and rich the colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual blouse she wore.
She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl.
She was breathing fast and deep, as though she had been running, and with every breath perfume seemed to come from her hair, and from her body, like perfume from an opening flower.
"I don't like that blouse," he said slowly, "it's a soft, shapeless thing!"
He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand aside.
"Don't touch me!" she cried.
He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.
"And where may you have been?" he asked.
"In heaven—out of this house!"
With those words she fled upstairs.
Outside—in thanksgiving—at the very door, the organ-grinder was playing the waltz.
And Soames stood motionless.
What prevented him from following her?
Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down from that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for yet another glimpse of Irene's vanished figure, cooling his flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung herself on his breast—the scent of her still in the air around, and the sound of her laugh that was like a sob?
PART III
CHAPTER I—MRS. MACANDER'S EVIDENCE
Many people, no doubt, including the editor of the
'Ultra Vivisectionist,' then in the bloom of its first youth, would say that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks from his wife's doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed wedded happiness.
Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be relieved to learn that he did none of these things.
For active brutality is not popular with Forsytes; they are too circumspect, and, on the whole, too softhearted.
And in Soames there was some common pride, not sufficient to make him do a really generous action, but enough to prevent his indulging in an extremely mean one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood.
Above all this a true Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous.
Short of actually beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he therefore accepted the situation without another word.
Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the office, to sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.
He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away.
The house at Robin Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless.
Soames had brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he claimed from him the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.
A firm of solicitors, Messrs.
Freak and Able, had put in a defence on Bosinney's behalf.
Admitting the facts, they raised a point on the correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology, amounted to this: To speak of 'a free hand in the terms of this correspondence' is an Irish bull.
By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough of legal circles, a good deal of information came to Soames' ear anent this line of policy, the working partner in his firm, Bustard, happening to sit next at dinner at Walmisley's, the Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of the Common Law Bar.
The necessity for talking what is known as 'shop,' which comes on all lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a young and promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum to his neighbour, whose name he did not know, for, seated as he permanently was in the background, Bustard had practically no name.
He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a 'very nice point.' He then explained, preserving every professional discretion, the riddle in Soames' case.
Everyone, he said, to whom he had spoken, thought it a nice point.