She could not tell, therefore, the profound impression her words would make.
Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes from face to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words.
On either side of her a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face turned towards his plate, ate his mutton steadily.
These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that they were known as the Dromios.
They never talked, and seemed always completely occupied in doing nothing.
It was popularly supposed that they were cramming for an important examination.
They walked without hats for long hours in the Gardens attached to their house, books in their hands, a fox-terrier at their heels, never saying a word, and smoking all the time.
Every morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down Campden Hill on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they cantered up again.
Every evening, wherever they had dined, they might be observed about half-past ten, leaning over the balustrade of the Alhambra promenade.
They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing their lives, apparently perfectly content.
Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of gentlemen, they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder, and said in precisely the same voice:
"Have you seen the...?"
Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down her fork; and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her plate.
Mrs. MacAnder, however, with presence of mind, said instantly:
"I must have a little more of that nice mutton."
But afterwards in the drawing—room she sat down by Mrs. Small, determined to get to the bottom of the matter.
And she began:
"What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic temperament!
Soames is a really lucky man!"
Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for that inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with outsiders. Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle of her whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:
"My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!"
CHAPTER II—NIGHT IN THE PARK
Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the very thing to make her guest 'more intriguee than ever,' it is difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken.
It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even among themselves—to use the word Soames had invented to characterize to himself the situation, it was 'subterranean.'
Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder's encounter in Richmond Park, to all of them—save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept—to James on his domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to George the wild one, on his daily adventure from the bow window at the Haversnake to the billiard room at the
'Red Pottle,' was it known that 'those two' had gone to extremes.
George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions still current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more accurately than any one when he said to his brother Eustace that 'the Buccaneer' was 'going it'; he expected Soames was about 'fed up.'
It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done?
He ought perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be deplorable.
Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken.
In this impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and nothing to each other; in fact, to pass it over.
By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression might be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and there seemed a slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to show her coldness.
Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James would reveal to Emily the real suffering that his son's misfortune caused him.
"I can't tell," he would say; "it worries me out of my life.
There'll be a scandal, and that'll do him no good.
I shan't say anything to him.
There might be nothing in it.
What do you think?
She's very artistic, they tell me.
What?
Oh, you're a 'regular Juley!
Well, I don't know; I expect the worst.
This is what comes of having no children.
I knew how it would be from the first.
They never told me they didn't mean to have any children—nobody tells me anything!"
On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with worry, he would breathe into the counterpane.
Clad in his nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he resembled some long white bird.
"Our Father-," he repeated, turning over and over again the thought of this possible scandal.
Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the blame of the tragedy down to family interference.
What business had that lot—he began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch, including young Jolyon and his daughter, as 'that lot'—to introduce a person like this Bosinney into the family? (He had heard George's soubriquet,