"What!" exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole body.
"I don't know what you may mean by 'what,'" answered Soames coldly;
"your say in her affairs is confined to paying out her income; please
bear that in mind. In choosing not to disgrace her by a divorce, I
retained my rights, and, as I say, I am not at all sure that I shan't
require to exercise them."
"My God!" ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.
"Yes," said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice. "I've
not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, 'The man of property'!
I'm not called names for nothing."
"This is fantastic," murmured Jolyon. Well, the fellow couldn't force
his wife to live with him. Those days were past, anyway! And he looked
around at Soames with the thought: 'Is he real, this man?' But Soames
looked very real, sitting square yet almost elegant with the clipped
moustache on his pale face, and a tooth showing where a lip was lifted
in a fixed smile. There was a long silence, while Jolyon thought:
'Instead of helping her, I've made things worse.' Suddenly Soames said:
"It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many ways."
At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that he could
barely sit still in the cab. It was as if he were boxed up with hundreds
of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with that something in the
national character which had always been to him revolting, something
which he knew to be extremely natural and yet which seemed to him
inexplicable--their intense belief in contracts and vested rights, their
complacent sense of virtue in the exaction of those rights. Here beside
him in the cab was the very embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were,
of the possessive instinct--his own kinsman, too! It was uncanny and
intolerable! 'But there's something more in it than that!' he thought
with a sick feeling. 'The dog, they say, returns to his vomit! The sight
of her has reawakened something. Beauty! The devil's in it!'
"As I say," said Soames, "I have not made up my mind. I shall be obliged
if you will kindly leave her quite alone."
Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed the
thought of one now.
"I can give you no such promise," he said shortly.
"Very well," said Soames, "then we know where we are. I'll get down
here." And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign of farewell.
Jolyon travelled on to his Club.