"Who cares?" June cried; "let him do what he likes--you've only to
stick to it!" And she had not scrupled to say something of this sort at
Timothy's; James, when he heard of it, had felt a natural indignation
and horror.
What if Irene were to take it into her head to--he could hardly frame
the thought--to leave Soames? But he felt this thought so unbearable
that he at once put it away; the shady visions it conjured up, the sound
of family tongues buzzing in his ears, the horror of the conspicuous
happening so close to him, to one of his own children! Luckily, she had
no money--a beggarly fifty pound a year! And he thought of the deceased
Heron, who had had nothing to leave her, with contempt. Brooding over
his glass, his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted
to rise when the ladies left the room. He would have to speak to
Soames--would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like
this, now that such a contingency had occurred to him. And he noticed
with sour disfavour that June had left her wine-glasses full of wine.
'That little, thing's at the bottom of it all,' he mused; 'Irene'd never
have thought of it herself.' James was a man of imagination.
The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.
"I gave four hundred pounds for it," he was saying. "Of course it's a
regular work of art."
"Four hundred! H'm! that's a lot of money!" chimed in Nicholas.
The object alluded to was an elaborate group of statuary in Italian
marble, which, placed upon a lofty stand (also of marble), diffused an
atmosphere of culture throughout the room. The subsidiary figures, of
which there were six, female, nude, and of highly ornate workmanship,
were all pointing towards the central figure, also nude, and female, who
was pointing at herself; and all this gave the observer a very pleasant
sense of her extreme value. Aunt Juley, nearly opposite, had had the
greatest difficulty in not looking at it all the evening.
Old Jolyon spoke; it was he who had started the discussion.
"Four hundred fiddlesticks! Don't tell me you gave four hundred for
that?"
Between the points of his collar Swithin's chin made the second painful
oscillatory movement of the evening.
"Four-hundred-pounds, of English money; not a farthing less. I don't
regret it. It's not common English--it's genuine modern Italian!"
Soames raised the corner of his lip in a smile, and looked across at
Bosinney. The architect was grinning behind the fumes of his cigarette.
Now, indeed, he looked more like a buccaneer.